Within a Nightmare
by Crimso
Summary: After a fatal accident, Mion wakes up to find herself in a completely different Hinamizawa, one where no one has any regrets. Seemingly perfect, Mion decides to let herself blend in. However, even a world without regrets can be bloody. MionXKeiichi
1. Prologue

**_Within A Nightmare_**

Golden rays of sun beamed through the windows of the Hinamizawa classroom, illuminating the already well-lit classroom. Class had ended a few minutes ago, and most of the children had already gone back home or perhaps elsewhere to play with friends. However, this did not mean that the classroom was empty.

"All right! Who here is ready for today's club activities?" a voice bellowed out.

As soon as those words were spoken, a shrill laughter followed. "Ohohohohoho! I'm all ready for this!"

"What kind of game will we play today? I wonder, I wonder…" another voice spoke

A girl, one with emerald green hair that was tied in a ponytail, smiled at their excitement. She crossed her arms under her chest, staring down at the seated group before her. "Well, since it is nice out today, I figured that we should have a change of pace for once." She eyed the people before her, pausing for a dramatic effect. "We'll play outside today! And not only that, we'll be playing the most basic of all games! It's one that has been played by children for generations, but one that has certainly not been worn out! Hide and Go Seek!" she explained passionately.

Not even a second after that, a voice spoke out. "Oh come on, Mion! Hide and Go Seek? You make a passionate speech and then you announce we're playing _Hide and Go Seek?_" It was a boy with brown hair who had spoken these words, and he looked a little bit annoyed.

The green-haired girl turned to the boy, looking not one bit offended by his words. "Kei-chan, since when have you doubted my decisions? If I didn't have a special kind of plan for this, then I wouldn't be called Sonozaki Mion!"

"Let's hear it," the boy spoke.

She grinned. "We're playing out in the mountains!"

There was a cheering coming from the group of friends, though the boy who had questioned her choice of game remained silent.

"I still don't get what's so exciting about it," he said.

The girl turned to face him, grinning. "It's the mountains, Kei-chan. There's a whole bunch of places to hide up there and it's quite easy to get lost, to say the very least! You should know that, Kei-chan. Or…" she walked up to the boy, bending down so that her face was positioned right in front of his. "Is it just because little Kei-chan knows he can't stand a chance against us, since he just moved here a few months ago? Well, maybe you're right. I, along with the rest of the club, certainly have the advantage since we've lived here all our lives, but that shouldn't a hindrance to true club member! Remember, strive for number one no matter what the situation is, and you'll be able to find away around it! Otherwise, you have no right to be called a club member!"

The boy looked very surprised by her words, and he found himself looking around dumbfounded at the other people around him. All of them were smiling at him, and while it may be considered a normal smile to some, to him, they looked evil and sadistic. He gulped as he played with the collar of his shirt, realizing just how much this twist meant against him.

However, in a few moments, a smile grew on his face. It was one filled with determination, one that was a complete contrast to the nervous bundle he was before. "Heh, if that's the case, I'll just have to show you who a true club member is! You're not going to last for long, Sonozaki Mion!"

The girl laughed loudly. "That's the spirit!"

This girl was named Sonozaki Mion, known by everyone around her as a huge tomboy. She was the leader of this club, which was a club that did nothing more than play games afterschool. To some, it may seem a little boring, but to the members, it was something that could be described as the most fun thing on the planet. She took great pride in her club, and was almost always the one that won her activities, leaving almost no chance for the others. It wasn't something that she intended to give up, however. She would never give anyone a chance to win, and she would play her hardest. That was the number one rule of the club, after all.

She was also the heiress to the great Sonozaki family, though she didn't quite like it. She would have to act differently from normal around people while acting as the heiress, sometimes being cruel to people she didn't want to be cruel to. Because of this, most of the village feared what kind of person she would become in the future.

"Oh, Onee~? What will the punishment game for the loser be?" a sweet yet taunting voice spoke out.

Mion turned towards the source of the voice to come eye to eye with a girl who looked exactly like her in every single way, save for the fact that the other girl wore her hair down with yellow ribbons in it and wore a different outfit.

"Ohoho. Thank you for reminding me, Shion. I almost forgot." The girl smirked evilly as she shut her eyes, trying to envision the perfect punishment game.

The other green-haired girl grinned. "How about if we use _that_ outfit?"

Mion looked at the girl in surprise. "You don't mean… _that_ one?"

The identical girl nodded her head, smirking. "I meant _that_ one, Onee~."

A huge grin broke out across Mion's face, something that startled almost all the club members before her. "Well then, we'll just have to use that outfit, then! I like the idea, Shion. Thank you!" she said, shooting her sister a mischievous look.

"It's no problem, Onee," came a voice as equally mischievous as Mion's smirk.

This girl was named Sonozaki Shion, and was none other than Mion's identical twin sister. She had lived in the nearby city Okinomiya up until a few months ago, when she had convinced the head of the family, her own grandmother, to allow her to move in with her twin sister. She had agreed on the condition that she share a room with her twin and not meddle with family affairs. Due to the fact that she was the younger of the twins, her family treated her harshly and there were many who didn't even acknowledge her as a part of it. The two of them were a very mischievous duo, despite their differences. While Mion was a tomboy, Shion was the much more feminine one of the two, though she couldn't be called a "girly-girl." She wasn't nearly as passionate about the games, but when it came to making mischief with her twin, it was another story. This was one of those moments.

The two twins were very close, making mischief aside. Whenever Mion had a problem, she would come to Shion, and whenever Shion had a problem, she would come to Mion. They would share all of their secrets, even the most embarrassing of them. There wasn't one fact that one twin didn't know about the other.

Of course, they had a rather… complicated past, to say the least. Although the two of them never talked about it, there had been an incident in the past that had changed their lives. Mion's heritage to her family was marked on the back by the tattoo of a fierce demon, something that was given to her when she was still a very young girl. However, the tattoo had not been meant for her. It had been meant for her sister. It had been an accident that she had ended up with it, and it had changed her own identity. Yes, she had been born as Shion, while her twin sister born as Mion. This tattoo forced them to permanently swap identities.

It was something that both of the two felt a little terrible about. Had Mion not gotten the tattoo, she wouldn't have to be the heiress and wouldn't have to put on the mask of. Not only that, but surely Shion wouldn't be suffering right now. People would acknowledge her as the head and no one would hate her for being the second born. It was a harsh incident, but the twins tried to forget about it and move on with their lives. Dwelling on the past never helped anyone.

"What kind of outfit are you talking about, Mion-san?" a yellow-haired girl asked, curiosity in her purple eyes.

"It's a secret," Mion said. "The loser will find out when he loses."

Suddenly, there was a loud cry. "Hold on a moment, Mion! What's with using the word 'he?'" the brown-haired boy yelled out.

Mion smirked as she turned towards him, meeting his blue eyes with her green ones. "So you caught on, didn't you? Well, let this old man just say that it's highly unlikely that anyone but _you_ will lose this club activity. Therefore, the word he! I hope you like the outfit…"  
>"That's not fair!" the boy cried.<p>

Mion laughed at him. "It's the truth, Kei-chan! You know it, too!"

This boy, called Kei-chan by Mion, was really named Maebara Keiichi. He was the newcomer to the group, only having moved in in the beginning of June. All the others had lived in Hinamizawa all their lives, aside from one. Not only that, but he was the only male member of the group, and the one that most often lost when it came to club activities. There were a few games he had won, but those were rare. It was more often that he landed in the bottom of the rankings than a step above that.

Though Mion often kept it to herself, she had a huge crush on him. It was an odd thing for a tomboy like her to harbor, but she couldn't help it. She hated to admit it, but she found him kind of cool, even though he lost a lot. He was known for making large, convincing speeches that could pull the impossible off, and while it could seem annoying to some, Mion found his talent incredible. It was not only this that made him seem cool, though. He certainly had his moments. Though, Mion had to admit that the boy was also quite handsome, though she often tried to hide it from herself.

Keiichi crossed his arms over his chest. "Anyways, are we going to start? We've been spending too much time here!"

Mion looked about the crowd before her, and nodded her head. "All right then! Let's go!"

_~~~~X~~~~_

The group soon arrived at the mountainside, and was now gathered in a rather grassy spot. The whole area was perfect for hide and go seek, with many spots to explore. There were trees scattered about the whole area, along with rocks varying from the size of a pebble to a huge formation. The whole place was located on an elevated level of the village, with almost no one living there. A rather large and dangerous cliff marked the end of the mountain, with its rocky front and long drop. It would indeed make for a good game of hide and seek.

"All right, then! The game will start as soon as we pick someone to be it. Any volunteers?" Mion asked.

The only answer she got was the chirping of the cicadas.

She looked about the members. "Well then, we'll play a rock paper scissors tournament, with the winner having to be it. I'll go up against Shion, Satoko against Rika, and Rena against Keiichi. Winner of Shion and I goes up against Rena or Keiichi, and then Satoko or Rika goes up against them. We'll play one round, no best out of three. Got it?"

Everyone nodded his or her head in response.

"Go!"

Mion turned towards her twin and the game began. She shook her fist up in the air, and after a small chant, she transformed the fist into a flat palm, representing paper.

Her twin grinned as she looked at her fingers, forming the shape of scissors. "Looks like you win, Onee. But that's not a good thing, now it is it?"  
>Mion grumbled in annoyance when she realized that the winner was supposed to be it.<p>

The next round followed, with her facing off against an orange-haired girl named Rena. She was fifteen, and best known for her obsession with cute things. She had moved to Hinamizawa a year ago, making her the second newest member of Hinamizawa, though she had lived in Hinamizawa up until she was the age of seven. She had moved back after her father and mother divorced, which was something that was harsh on her. For a long time she felt that it was her fault, and deep inside probably still did, but she decided not to show it to people.

Mion's fist remained a fist as it was thrown out in front of Rena's hand, which was being held flat. This was one of the only times where Mion was glad to have lost.

Rena then faced off against Satoko, the yellow-haired girl of the club. She was the youngest of the group and was known among the members as the trickster. She was amazing at making traps, something she was very proud of. Of course, she could be childish at times, which is what she was when she won against Rena, which was usually something that should be considered good.

"What? But I don't want to be it!" Satoko complained.

A girl with blue hair appeared by her side, petting her head gently. "Mii, better luck next time, Satoko! But it looks like you're it!"

This girl was named Furude Rika, and in contrast to her best friend, was a cheerful child with nearly no mischievousness. She usually acted sweet and cute, though she had a dark side obtained from who knows where. She lived with Satoko, as both of their parents had died, though she didn't seem too upset about living on her own with only another girl her age and was in fact quite content with it.

Satoko originally had an older brother, though he disappeared a year ago. His name was Houjou Satoshi. He had protected his sister when they were being taken care of by a pair of abusive caretakers, their uncle and aunt, and had in the end killed their aunt and caused her uncle to go away. It was something painful, but she too tried not to think about it. That was just the way the club was.

"All right!" announced Mion. "We'll get started. Satoko, turn around and count to forty!"

Satoko grumbled as she turned herself around, covering her eyes with her hands.

"On your mark… get set…" Mion began to speak, bracing herself and getting ready to run. "…Go!"

All the club members burst out into a run at once, leaving behind the poor yellow-haired girl who was currently most annoyed by her situation. Mion smirked as she looked behind her, at the other club members. They would never find a spot as good as hers. She focused back on the front as she ran towards her destination; to the hiding spot that she knew would grant her certain victory.

She stopped when she reached an area not too far away from the cliff side, where trees pretty much dominated the area. She slid her way through the thick forest and to a large rock formation just a little while away. It was very large and of a rather deep gray color. It was very bumpy and rugged with a crack in the middle, a crack just big enough to fit a person in it. She smiled as she inched her way into the crack, then kneeling down. This was a spot no one would find her in.

"Ready or not, here I come!" Satoko declared, though her voice sounded fairly distant.

Mion sat there for a long time. Satoko had probably gone off in the opposite direction, for there was no one coming her way. She looked about. No, there certainly wasn't anyone there. If there was, then their figure must have certainly been hidden well by the thick trees. She couldn't hear any noise, though, so she assumed that there was indeed no one there.

She giggled darkly. Satoko may be young and childish, but she was very good at games and held one of the highest winning rates, though that wasn't much when compared to Mion. With her _incredible_ knowledge of the mountain, it would be easy to find people. It hadn't even been ten minutes into the game and Mion was sure that Keiichi had all ready been found, seeing as he had a very small amount of knowledge of the area. He needed to find a good area in forty seconds, otherwise he was doomed and had to stick to hiding in a tree or a bush or something obvious like that. Perhaps he hadn't even found one.

Even so, the thought of the boy made her blush ever so slightly. She was really cruel to him, wasn't she? Maybe that was why he didn't like her back, why her love was probably going to go unrequited forever. Well, that was probably one of the reasons. Another one had to be the fact that she was a tomboy, more comparable to someone of the opposite sex than her own. Keiichi would never want a girl like that. She let out a large sigh as she thought about the boy. Really, she felt weak for loving the boy, but she couldn't help it.

She sighed as she buried her head in her knees. Well, maybe one day there would be progression, though she doubted it.

Mion was broken away from her thoughts when she heard footsteps, and she looked right up to see Keiichi looking about the area, alert. She was right. The boy really didn't stand a chance. Satoko had already gotten him, and he was now simply helping her by finding other people who hadn't been found. She shrunk further into the crack, hoping that he wouldn't see her.

She took the time to look at the boy. The confused face that he was wearing right now made him seem kind of cute, Mion admitted. She shook her head as she realized that she was acting silly. She shouldn't be thinking such things. Sighing loudly, she leaned her head back and tried to shake those thoughts out.

That sigh was just what caused Keiichi to turn around and spot her. A smirk grew on his face.

"I got you, Mion!" he cried out.

Mion's head flew back to its normal position and she looked right at the boy, at his face that was full of pride from finding her. Mion panicked. She couldn't lose! The others also had a good knowledge of the place around them, so it was likely that he was the only one that had been found. That meant that she had no chance of being the winner right now.

_Quick, Mion! Think of something. This can't be the end!_

She had to find a way to escape the situation, she decided. It was pretty much impossible, but then again, she _was_ Sonozaki Mion. She could easily come up with something.

Mion sprang up on her two feet. "No you didn't!" she declared. Suddenly, the girl burst from the crevice and ran right by the boy, startling him almost half to death. "You have to catch me first!"

He turned around. "Hey, that's not fair!" he yelled out. He began to run after her at the same pace that she was running, but the delayed reaction made it so that he was quite a ways behind her. "That's against the rules! This is Hide and Go Seek, not Tag! I have to find you, not catch you!"

Mion turned around and stuck out her tongue. "It's fair in my rule book!" she yelled back.

"Hey!"

The two teenagers ran, Mion with a satisfied smirk on her face and Keiichi with a look of annoyance. She turned around briefly to grin at him and intimidate him, just to prompt him to run a little faster. There was no harm in doing that. He was too far away from her to catch her, anyways. The only option here for Keiichi was failure.

"Get back here!" Keiichi yelled.

"Not a chance!" she yelled back.

Mion watched as trees flew by her as her feet hit the ground, now at a faster rate. She was running faster than she had ever done before, and she found that it wasn't just for the victory, but because it was fun. Teasing the boy she liked was just too much fun at times. He would never catch her.

After a little while again, she turned towards Keiichi, focusing on him. "Haha! This old man is in the lead! Just watch, Kei-chan! I'll be the winner, no matter what!"

Keiichi's look of annoyance was suddenly replaced by a look of horror, something that puzzled the boy. "Wait, Mion! Stop!" he yelled out.

"What do you mean, stop? And let you win? No way!" she yelled out to him.

"No, really Mion! I mean it!" he yelled out, the look still on his face. He suddenly stopped running, much to her surprise.

"What's it, Kei-chan? Did you realize that you can't catch me?" she asked.

He shook his head frantically. "Just stop, Mion! Look ahead of you!"

Mion, puzzled, stared at Keiichi for a little while longer. Then deciding that his behavior was a little funny and that his acting was a little too realistic to be fake, she turned her head towards the front.

But it was too late.

Mion tried to stop when she saw the great cliff side right before her, but it was too close. Perhaps if she had listen to Keiichi and just looked ahead a second before she did, she would have been able to stop. Her attempt to stop turned into a stumble as she found herself on the ledge of the cliff, one foot in the air and her whole body tilting forwards. She struggled, trying to move herself back with the one foot that remained on the ground, but it was all in vain.

Her whole body was falling down the cliff, and her eyes widened when she realized just how long the drop was. It seemed like the ground was a mile away.

No one could survive a fall like this.

The last thing she felt was her body collide with the ground, and an eruption of pain, before her world turned black, possibly to remain that way forever.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.**_**3**_**:**

**Cliffhanger, almost literally! It would be literally, but she's at the bottom, not about to fall off. Still involves a cliff, though.**

**Oh well, let's move on. For those who are new, Hi. I'm Crimso. I like Higurashi and I write fanfictions. My favorite character is Mion. That's all you really need to know, you'll understand more about me through my ramblings. Speaking of which, this is Crimso's Corner V.3. I say ramblings and clear up information about the story here. Now, you may be wondering if you have read my fanfics before… what is the difference between Crimso's Corner V.2 and V.3? The answer is…. None at all! It just sounds cool.**

**I'm glad to be writing again. The inspiration from this fic obviously came from the Dice Killing Arc of Rei. But this fanfiction goes where Rei didn't, where I think it should have. Of course, Mion's the main character here and not Rika, but that aside. The beginning may seem similar, but IT IS NOT. This is NOT THE SAME AS THE DICE KILLING ARC. You'll see in the next chapter just how different it is! Well, that's where it came from. It was originally planned to be downright brutal but I took out most of those scenes, so I'm rating it T for now and see how it goes.**

**One more thing: Reviews. Okay, so I don't like asking for reviews anymore, so this applies to the whole story. I like Reviews. To me, reviews are motivation. It's nice hearing about what people think of my story, be it compliments, criticism, predictions… yeah. It's also a way for me to know that people are indeed reading. If people don't read my story, then why should I write them? So it's nice to drop a review just to know people do read my fanfictions and to leave a comment to make me happy. Reviews = My motivation. Lack of reviews = Lack of motivation. Lack of motivation = slower updates and perhaps cancelation all together. So please review, and let me know if you see typos! As for update speed, I don't know. I have five months to finish this, the same amount of time as BFB, but this fanfiction is probably going to be shorter and I will NOT procrastinate on this one. I will hit myself if I do.**

**With that, I hope you enjoy the strange world of WAN!**

**~Crimso**


	2. Chapter 1: Another World

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Welcome to Crimso's Notes V.2! What's different about it, you ask? Well, again, nothing at all. I just like putting these V.2 V.3 things… yeah. It's where I write some notes for you to keep in mind while reading the chapter. We're technically on version two of Crimso's Notes, but I suppose you can consider it V.3 because I had it in GED. It just wasn't titled. It wasn't in the last chapter simply because I wanted to open with just the title. In any case, let's get moving on this! First, let me start with a little rambling. This long weekend has been busy. I have a history project, a Spanish project, and a science test to study for. Also, this. Yet, I don't feel stressed. That's odd. Maybe it's because my history teacher is really laid back about projects and has very low standards? Spanish is nothing… really. I actually got my very first A- in Spanish two weeks ago.**

**Note One: Crimso's Notes (v.2) won't usually be this long**

**Note Two: This chapter… may be a little confusing at first. May. **

**Note Three: Since this is an AU, some things may seem out of place. Do not worry. I have an explanation for **_**everything.**_

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter One: Another World_

"Urgh…"

This was the only thing Mion could get out of her mouth. The only thing that the green-haired girl could feel was pain from all throughout her body, and the only thing she could see was darkness. Much to her annoyance, the girl found her thoughts and memory a little fuzzy. Where was she, and why was she there? She attempted to move, but was met with a sting of pain.

But that washed away briefly, much to her surprise. Without thinking, she pulled herself up, standing up on shaky, bruised legs. Blinking, the girl looked around her. She was at the bottom of a cliff and it was the night, but for some reason, her mind was unclear enough to cause her not to question this. She barely took in the details.

_Gotta… gotta find help… gotta find someone…_

She staggered forward on her weak legs, an arm wrapped around her pained stomach. She could taste something metallic on her tongue, though she didn't question what the substance was. It seemed a little faint, too.

_Hinamizawa… gotta get to… Hinamizawa…_

But as soon as she thought that, the girl felt her legs give out beneath her, and her body hit the grassy floor beneath her. Her eyes blinked as she tried desperately to keep them open, but it was all in vain. They were closing shut once again, without permission, leaving her in the darkness.

_~~~~X~~~~_

When Mion regained consciousness again, something was noticeably different about her surroundings. At first, her vision was blurry, but she could detect the color white all around her, along with the distorted figure of someone. Their back was turned towards her, so it was impossible to make out who it was, and even from what she could tell it didn't seem to be anyone that she knew the name of. She let out a slight moan as a slight pain erupted in her side.

The figure turned around.

"Sonozaki-san?" it spoke. Yes, she certainly didn't know who that was.

The figure got closer and stood right in front of her, looking at her closely. Mion blinked several times to try to regain her vision, allowing the face to become normal. Finally, her vision seemed to find itself and she found herself blinking right in the face of someone she didn't really know. It was a woman with brown hair, looking at her with a very concerned look on her face.

"Sonozaki-san, are you awake? Can you understand me?"

Mion nodded slowly.

The woman grinned. "All right, good. Is your vision blurry at all?"

Mion shook her head.

"Has it been?" she asked.

She nodded.

"Can you speak?"

Mion opened up her mouth. "Yeah, I think I can…" she managed to speak out.

The woman smiled. "Good." She then turned away from Mion and began to walk away from her, turning to a small counter that had been in the room, where she had been standing before. She picked up a clipboard and began to write things down, causing Mion to wonder why. It took a little while before she realized that the woman was in a nurse's outfit, which then caused Mion to look about.

She was in a hospital room, the one in Okinomiya. It didn't look like the Irie Clinic. Mion looked down at herself, finding that she was lying in a hospital bed and wearing a gown, definitely not what she had been wearing before. She placed a hand on her head as she rubbed it, wondering why she was there. Had something happened to her?

"That was some fall, Sonozaki-san. Please don't do that again…" the nurse spoke.

That was something that instantly jogged Mion's memory. All the scenes leading up to this point flashed before her, and it suddenly all made sense. _Oh yeah! I fell off that cliff when I was playing with Kei-chan and the others. But… _She paused. That was a long fall, and there was no way that she should be alive right now. Looking down at her arms, she noticed that there was slight bruising, but definitely not enough for someone who had fallen off a huge cliff. There had been slight pain before, but that pain shouldn't be compared to someone who fell off a cliff. Had she just gotten lucky when she fell?

The nurse put the clipboard down. "I'll alert your parents. Please excuse me…"

The nurse walked out of the room, and Mion took the time to think over what had happened. She could faintly remember dragging herself a little in the night, but that was all she could remember after the fall. All the other memories were what happened before she had fallen off. Sighing, Mion looked towards the window, finding the sun shining down upon her. It had been night when she had dragged herself, so how much time had passed by since then?

It made her puzzled. Why hadn't her friends alerted anyone? They were there during the day. There was no way she would still be there at night had her friends been with her at the time. She tried to figure out reasons why she would have still been there last night, but nothing was really coming to mind. It was possible that the hospital just hadn't reached her, but that was a little funny. They were usually fast when it came to life-threatening injuries. She crossed that idea out of her mind. Perhaps her friends had carried her here instead, and thus taking more time? No… that wouldn't make sense, either. They would have been carrying her by then! She mentally slapped herself for coming up with something so stupid.

Then… why? Why had she been sitting at the bottom of the cliff in the night, when her friends had been there to see her fall in the day?

She sighed. This wasn't making any sense. First there was the matter of her actually surviving, then the matter of how she got here, and then the matter of why her friends didn't tell anyone… well, it could be possible they just didn't care. But she shook that thought out of her head as soon as it came. That was stupid. Her club was too tightly bound together and there was no way that they didn't care about her fall. They surely would have contacted someone.

Grumbling, Mion put a hand on her head. Maybe she shouldn't think about this. The nurse had gone to get her parents, who would surely explain everything to her.

Soon enough, her parents arrived along with the nurse. She noticed the expressions of concern on their faces, which seemed to be a little red from crying, and how relieved they grew when they confirmed that their daughter was okay.

"Oh, dear! You're all right!" cried her mother as she ran up to her. She placed a hand on her arm, looking at her daughter with a look of concern on her face. "Oh… I'm so sorry that this ever happened. This is all my fault…!"

Mion just gave her a reassuring grin. "I'm fine, Mom. It's not your fault…"

Her father looked rather surprised for a moment, but he quickly brushed that off. "We were so worried when we learned about what had happened. We came over here right away." He walked over to her, staring at her with tear-filled eyes. It was something that surprised Mion. Her father never cried. "They say they found you a little while away from the cliff… did you drag yourself?"

"Yeah," Mion responded, recalling the memory. "Just a little, but then I passed out."

Her father still looked concerned. "Are you sure you're all right now?"

Mion shot him one of her tomboyish grins, just to reassure him of her point. "Heh, I'm perfectly fine! A little fall from a cliff could never hurt_ me!_"

Her parents turned to each other after she said that, a look of shock and confusion on their faces. After exchanging glances, her mother looked back towards her daughter. "Anyways… I'm surprised you're all right. You don't seem upset at all…"

"Nah, I'm not upset at all. It's just a little fall. Barely even hurts," she said, then holding up a bruised arm and moving it about. It didn't hurt in the slightest to do such a thing, and she showed no signs of being hurt. "See? It doesn't hurt to move my arm or anything like that. I'm sure I'll be able to leave the hospital soon enough."

"We'll let you leave as soon as we give you a check up to make sure you're okay. Falling from a cliff isn't something to take lightly…" the nurse said as she continued to scribble things down on the clipboard she was holding, every so often looking at the girl before returning to jot down more notes. "I'm surprised that you survived. I don't think anyone can survive a cliff like that." She smiled.

Mion nodded. _I was thinking the same exact thing. How did I survive? Well, in any case, I guess I shouldn't dwell on it too much. I was lucky, and for that, I'm glad… _

"I told your sister and Kasai about it. They'll be here to talk to you in a little bit." Her mother's face softened for a little bit as she reached out to pat her daughter's head, reassuring her with it. "You know, they were both shocked when I told them. They were so concerned… your sister nearly dropped her things and ran to the hospital on her own feet! But we stopped her, of course. Kasai was the same."

Mion let out a sigh at the thought of her sister and Kasai, her sister's bodyguard. "That sounds just like them…" she said as she shut her eyes.

She could certainly imagine Shion dropping her things the moment she heard about her getting into an accident and running over, and it was likely she would have if they hadn't stopped her from doing so. Really, Shion was such a caring person. Just the thought of it made her feel warm on the inside.

...Wait a moment. Wasn't Shion there when she fell? Her mother said that she told Shion about it. But Shion had been in the area when she fell, and surely Keiichi would say something about it. That didn't make any sense at all. The only explanation she could come up with was that Keiichi didn't tell anyone about the fall, but she knew he would never do that. Then again, it was possible he ran off to get help for her, but that contradicted the fact that she had been there last night, way after she had fallen off a cliff.

_This hurts my head…_

"But wasn't she there when I fell?" Mion asked finally, hoping to get it all cleared up.

Her mother blinked in confusion. "…No, she was at home. Why would have she been there? …Dear, are you sure you're all right?" she asked, placing a hand on her forehead. "Maybe you hit your head?"  
><em>No… I didn't! That can't be it!<em> She had fallen on her side, after all. Besides, the memories were too clear to be false. She had definitely fallen off a cliff when she had been playing tag with her group of friends. Shion couldn't have been at home unless she abandoned the game. She let out a large sigh, rubbing her temples. Things just didn't make any sense.

Deciding to go along with it, Mion just sighed again. "Oh yeah, you're right. I guess my memory isn't working completely. Sorry about that, Mom, Dad."

Her father's concerned face softened into a smile. "That's okay. I heard that people get like that after they pass out for a long amount of time, so it's nothing for you to be ashamed about."

Mion nodded. Maybe her memories really _had_ been fake. Maybe she had been all alone when it happened, which would explain why no one found her and why Shion didn't know about her falling. Really, though, those memories did seem a little too real to be fake. But it was the only possible explanation for now, and she had to go along with it. There was still the question of why she had survived, but she could always just say that was a stroke of luck.

She accepted this. She really had been alone when she fell, right? Maybe her mind had just convinced her that Keiichi was there to make herself feel a little better about it. Everything made sense, now. She could stop thinking about this and relax. Letting out a sigh, she rested her head back on the pillow and allowed herself to enjoy the comfort of the sheets. There was nothing more to be concerned about. She would be out of here soon and things would go on as normal.

That was when she heard frantic footsteps coming from outside, and the next thing she knew, they were getting closer, close enough to be right in front of her.

A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders, causing Mion's eyes to fly right open.

"Are you all right? !" It was Shion. There was a look of concern on her face, something that Mion would have expected of the girl. "Please tell me you're all right!"

"I'm all right," Mion reassured her sister. "Just fine…"

Shion let out a large sigh. "I'm so glad," she whispered. The girl stammered over to a hospital chair in the corner, allowing herself to collapse into it.

But that was when Mion noticed something very, very, _very_ strange. Her whole body bolted upwards in her bed as she looked at her sister, who was sitting there with a stressed look on her face, tears streaming down her face. It was not her face that was odd, though. It was an expected reaction from her. There was something else that was much stranger, something that definitely wasn't something that Shion would be doing right now.

She was wearing her clothing.

"H-Huh?" Confusion lit up her face and body like never before. Was there any reason why she was wearing her clothing? She scanned up and down her sister's body. She was sporting a yellow shirt and blue jeans, along with her green hair tied into a ponytail. There was no mistaking it. She was indeed dressing as her.

She looked at her relatives, who seemed to have no reaction to this. Then she turned to Kasai, who was standing there with a look of apology on his face, even readable through his thick black glasses.

"I'm so sorry about this..." he said as he turned towards Mion, looking at her straight in the eyes, "…_Shion-san_."

_W…Wha…?_ Mion looked around frantically, her heart race increasing. Why were they calling her by her sister's name? She turned towards Mion in panic, looking at her. She had her hands buried in her eyes, so there was no way that she could read the expression on her face. Just when she had thought she had things all figured out… _this_ happened. Looking towards Kasai with shock and confusion on her face, she opened her mouth to ask, but quickly shut it.

_Did… Shion swap places with me? So that it can seem like she's the one in pain instead of me? _That would make sense. Then the Sonozaki family could continue on with family affairs without worrying about the state of the heiress, with Shion taking her place while she recovered. But even when she thought about it, she realized that if Shion hadn't been there, then there would be no time to swap places. She hadn't been the one to find her! She grasped her head as she tried to figure things out.

"…Don't be worried, Kasai. This is my fault," her mother said as she turned towards the bodyguard.

"No, I was the one who was supposed to protect her." He turned towards Mion, a look of sorrow on his face. "I should have been able to do something…"

Suddenly, another voice came out. "No, it's all my fault! You guys don't have to blame yourself. It's all mine…" It was Shion, whose voice was very slightly muffled by her hands. "I wasn't there when I should have been!"

Her father shot her a look. "Mion, you really shouldn't blame this on you. You two… you just haven't seen each other in a long time…" He sighed. "How long has it been? Two months? Three months? Four month—"

"About a year…" finished Shion.

"Right. There's nothing you could have done…" her father said.

_….About… a… year?_ Those words played over and over again in Mion's mind. There was a way she could explain why no one saved her, there was a reason to explain why she had still been there at night, there was a reason to explain why Shion didn't know she had fallen off a cliff, there was a reason to explain why she was wearing her clothing, but there was no way to explain _this_. It hadn't been a year since she had seen her, no way! There was no way that her mind was faking that, either! Her sister had been with her last night when they went to bed, and certainly the night before that, and most definitely the night before that one… She had been with her every day since she had moved in.

There was _no_ way to explain this.

"But I could have asked Batcha to let me see her!" protested Shion. "I know she doesn't let me see her ever, but if I had just begged and begged…! And even so, I could have run off and met her at the apartment…!"

Her mother walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Mion. There was _nothing_ you could have done. _Nothing…"_

As her sister continued to cry, Kasai walked up to her, an apologetic look on his face.

"I'm so sorry that all of this ever happened, Shion-san. Will you forgive me and believe me if I were to tell you that I will protect you better next time?" asked Kasai.

All Mion could do was slowly nod her head. She had no idea how to react to anything going on around her.

He let out a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad."

"Shion, I hope you'll forgive me, too. I would have done something if I had been with you…" her father spoke.

Mion couldn't handle this anymore. Everyone was calling her Shion and left and right, and it was hurting her head every time she was addressed by her twin's name. It was too much for her, especially while she was trying to figure everything out. Looking to her sobbing twin, to her concerned parents, to her apparent bodyguard, to the nurse who was fixing a few things up in the room, she let out a sigh.

"I'm sorry, but can I have a few minutes to myself?" Mion asked.

Everyone was surprised by her words, to say the very least.

"But Shion, are you sure you'll be okay?" Her mother asked, another concerned look on her face. "You seem to be acting a little funny today, even if you say you're fine…"

Mion closed her eyes and nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine. I just need some time to clear my head…"

Nothing was making sense anymore. Before, it had a little, but now, nothing was. It was like several different jigsaw puzzles had been dumped in front of her and then the pieces mixed together, so that it was impossible to fit them all together into one big picture. There were just no answers.

The relatives looked at each other, unsure of what they should do. After a little while of hesitation, they left the room, though Shion stood there for a few more minutes, staring into her sister's eyes with her tear-filled ones. It just hurt the more Mion looked at Shion, seeing her wearing her clothing and having her name. This had to be some kind of sick dream, one that was very realistic at that. What was she going to say? Was she going to suddenly yell out "surprise!" and tell her everything was all a joke, and that she was just wearing her clothing for fun and that they really had seen each other yesterday, and not a year ago? When opened her mouth, Mion really was expecting to hear those words.

"I'm sorry about this, Shion. I'll come visit you at the apartment, even if Batcha says I can't. …Okay?" she said to her sister.

All hope shattered with those words. There was no playfulness in her word, only dead seriousness and harsh reality. All Mion could do was slowly nod her head, biting her lip while she did so.

With one last look, Shion left the room, closing the door behind her.

She was now all alone, and she had some time to think. Shion hadn't said anything to her indicating that everything was just set up by her, so it was unlikely that they had swapped places and that she was making things up. Obviously her parents wouldn't have bought it, either, as they were aware that Shion now lived with her. There was no reason for her to lie. If she had, she would have said something other than what she had said when she was about to leave.

Why, then, was she being called Shion and why was she being told that she hadn't seen her sister in a year?

Mion took a deep breath. Well, there was only one way to find out about this.

She got up from her bed on shaky legs, first giving herself some time to get used to standing up after lying down for such a long time. Then, she slowly lifted up her gown, so that her back was visible. She strained her neck to take a look at it. It was usually hard for her to do this whenever she wanted to get a look at it, but she was always able to do so. Of course, she couldn't see the whole thing, just a little, but that had always been enough.

Which is why she was very surprised when she saw nothing on her back. She gasped as she touched it gently. Where was her tattoo? Her tattoo was large enough for even her to see when she looked at her own back like this. There just wasn't anything, now! She strained herself further, trying to get a better look to see if she just wasn't looking in the right spot and it was indeed there. Try as she might, though, she found that her back had nothing on it.

There was no tattoo.

She had gotten that tattoo when she was little, and it marked the fact that she was Sonozaki Mion, the heiress of the family. Now that she didn't have it, it meant the opposite. She was not the heiress of the family.

…_So… then… I'm really Shion?_

She touched her back again. It had all been an accident, after all. That tattoo was never meant for her in the first place. If she didn't have that tattoo, then she would be Shion, who she truly was, who she was born as. She always regretted stealing the tattoo from her sister like this, but… she never once imagined how things would actually be if she hadn't gotten that tattoo. Sure, she acknowledged that she would be without her heritage and her sister would be living a normal life, but not how it would feel for her.

…But still, why? Why didn't she have the tattoo anymore? It was a permanent tattoo! It couldn't have just disappeared like that, and especially not over night!

_Just what in the world… is going on here? !_

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3 (Long edition)**

**CLEAR UP:**

_**Throughout the narrative of the story, the twins will be referred to by the names that they have in the real Hinamizawa in 1983. However, they will be called their birth names by other characters, because that's who they truly are in this fanfiction. It would be too confusing otherwise. **_**Of course if you have objections, let me know.**

**Okay, so this is something I've always wanted to write. It came to me one day, when I was going over the Dice Killing arc and what it could have been. What if the Sonozaki twins had really been swapped in that universe? Then I decided that I would write a fanfiction about it, about how Mion would be if she had never received the tattoo, and if she was really still Shion. I'm really excited to be writing this and I hope you are looking forward to seeing what becomes of it!**

**Something I need to address right now. Chapter length. I'm going to try to aim for shorter chapters and hopefully not push myself to write colossal chapters like usual. **_**I don't know how long this is going to last. **_**It usually ends up longer than it is supposed to, anyways. That being said, this whole fanfiction will probably be twenty to thirty chapters and each chapter should be four thousand words to ten thousand, though I hope not to pass seven thousand very often anymore. We'll just have to see. BFB was going to be no longer than GED and in fact much shorter, but it actually turned out a little longer, having thirty-nine chapters + the prologue and epilogue (a total of forty one). **

**Okay, so there's something else I need to talk about. I will try to update fast, and I have the same amount of time as BFB to finish this, but seeing as this is shorter and I will be updating more often it is more than likely it won't take me the whole five months I have. You may be wondering what I will do in the case that I have more time left. Well, it depends. If I have over two weeks I'll spend the time writing random oneshots whenever I feel like it, and anything less I'll relax and not write. IF in the rare chance I have about a month or two, I may actually get working on my next fanfiction, though probably not posting the chapters until I get back. What's my next fanfiction, you may be asking? My next fanfiction is my very lengthy Green-Eyed Demon rewrite: _Eyes of Green._ I can't say much about it, but the information is on my profile if you want to take a look! The rest... I'll figure out and announce when this fanfiction is actually over. **

**Nothing much else to say here. I should go proofread…**

**~Crimso**


	3. Chapter 2: Letters

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**It's the end of the second quarter and everything is crashing right down. …I don't want to talk about, though. So let's move on.**

**Note: There's going to be a lot of time skipping about. Well, maybe. It depends if things go according to how they are in my head. We'll see what happens but I'm putting this here just to warn you in case anything is to happen.**

**Note two: Remember the Mion/Shion thing and let me know if I make any mistakes. I caught one in the last chapter, actually.**

**Note three: Please keep in mind that we are following basic Higurashi structure. And by that, I mean "somewhat lighter beginning, very dark ending chapters."**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Two: Letters_

After getting checked up on by the doctors and making sure that everything was okay, Mion was allowed to be released from the hospital that same night. It hadn't even been a few hours since she came, but for some reason, it felt like she had been trapped in this strange reality for day. Perhaps it was just all the stress that was going on from it and all the changes. There were just so many questions in her mind. First of all, how did she get here in the first place? Second of all, why was she here? Third of all, where was she? Was this just her world, the past altered, or was she in another world entirely?

"Shion-san, are you sure you're going to be all right? They let you out mostly because you said you were feeling okay," Kasai said as he walked out of the hospital doors, Mion at his side. "I'm worried about you."

Mion was about to answer, but she quickly shut her mouth as she remembered that she was not Mion in this world, but Shion. She had to act like her sister would; otherwise it would seem a little odd. Taking a moment to get her mind into the Shion mode, she smiled. "Don't worry!" she said, using her sister's kind and gentle voice. They could impersonate each other's voices perfectly, and no one ever suspected a thing. "I'm fine!"

She shot him the most Shion smile that she could, which caused Kasai to shift a little uncomfortably. His expression, though, was unreadable through those thick black glasses.

"Let me know if you feel bad again."

Mion nodded her head. "Of course!"

The two of them stepped into Kasai's sleek, black car. Mion relaxed as she leaned in the plush, gray seats, enjoying the comfort of them. After buckling her seatbelt up, she crossed her arms behind her head and allowed it to relax on them. She needed some time to think more than anything else right now.

There were no words spoken on the way to the apartment, which Mion appreciated. A bit of time to sort things out was certainly needed at the moment. She stared out the window as buildings went by. It certainly did look like the Okinomiya she knew, having no differences in buildings or people. If she didn't know any better, she would say it was her own world. And perhaps it was her old world, just changed, but a part of her said that she had ended up in some sort of alternate reality.

But how? It clearly had to do with the fall. Both the her in the other world and the her that she had taken the place of in this world had fallen off a cliff, which had to be the trigger. But what exactly triggered her to switch worlds and bodies? She sighed. There was no way to figure this out. She just didn't have that kind of power. There was no way a normal human being could look at a world and tell it apart from a changed history or an alternate reality, that was beyond anyone's power. They could theorize, but there were never any answers.

But why was it in this world that she didn't have the tattoo, then, or why was history changed so that she didn't have the tattoo if that were indeed the case? Once again, there were no answers.

_But most importantly… how do I get back?  
><em>There was one desire she had right now, and that was to go back to her old friends at once. She didn't know exactly how she could do that, but she would have to figure it out. She didn't want to be stuck in this world forever. As nice as it was to see that Shion was happy in this universe because she was the head, she knew deep inside that their fates had already been decided and it wasn't something to be tampered with. She did indeed regret the fact that she got the tattoo instead of her sister but that was in the past. Neither of them tried to think about it.

She gritted her teeth. There really weren't any answers.

Well, she supposed she would come up with something. For now, she had to learn how to fit into this world. She needed to learn just what made it different. _It's going to be tough, though. _She couldn't go up and _ask_ someone, that was for sure. Mion thought about this for a while, eventually deciding that the best course of action was to go along with life and see what people said to her and take in all the changes. The only person she had encountered that truly had changed was Shion, but perhaps the same could be said for her other friends. Were they different, too?

Considering the fact that Shion hadn't seen her for a year in this world, it was unlikely she even knew her friends. She sighed as she realized it would be hard for her to ever find out the truth behind it. There really wasn't any hope from the start, she realized, but a little thinking never did any harm and it certainly did make her feel a little more positive about the whole situation.

For now, she decided, she would do what she could do with her current situation. She would figure the rest out when she got the chance to.

The car eventually stopped, and the two of them got out. As Mion looked before her at the building, she identified it as being Shion's apartment building, which wasn't too surprising. She did note, though, that the whole building was the same and that there wasn't the slightest thing different about it. Looking around her, she realized the same applied to the rest of the location.

_It's not the location that's different here. _Mion scratched her head as she thought. _It's the people._

They entered the building, climbing up steps until they reached the apartment that belonged to Shion. As Mion thought, it was the same apartment. Kasai opened the door for her, holding it and waiting until she walked in before he did.

Mion looked around at the apartment. It was indeed just like she remembered. There was a small kitchen, a small living room, a small dining room, and two bedrooms as well as a bathroom.

"I'll be in my room," Mion said.

Kasai just nodded.

With that, the green-haired girl wandered down the small hallway and into Shion's room. Though perhaps, Mion noted, it would be more appropriate to call it her room now. Upon entering, Mion took note of what was around her. It seemed to be a little bit different, which Mion noted was probably because of how she was in this world. The room could not be described as being messy or clean, perhaps somewhere in between the two leaning more towards one of the sides than the other, though Mion couldn't figure out which one that would be. It did seem like she cleaned up, though it was the fact that she didn't do a very good job of it that made the messy part. Clothing was sticking out from the drawers, papers were stuffed on top of wardrobes and tables carelessly, the bed was made but the sheets were crooked and jumbled, though the floor remained without anything on it.

Mion placed her hands on her hips as she observed. Really, this version of "her" that had been here before she took her place must have not been very careful when it came to cleaning up. Though her personality wouldn't suggest it, Mion was someone who always liked to be organized and keep her room as clean as possible. Shion was the type to leave things hanging out but not even with an attempt to clean it up, which annoyed the older twin to no end. She concluded that this version of her was somewhere in between the real her and the Shion back in the actual Hinamizawa.

Grumbling, Mion walked over to her bed and began to fix the sheets up so that they weren't all that messy. She fixed up the table stand on the left of her bed, removing some of the papers and placing it within the miniature draw that the nightstand had. She wasn't quite sure _what_ they were, but she supposed that they were too important for this version of her to throw away for whatever reason.

After that was done, she collapsed on her neatly made bed. Even though she had thought things over, she was tempted to do the same thing again. She placed a hand on her forehead and rubbed it gently as she tried to work out what she was going to do now that she was stuck here, and if there was a way to get back. Well, perhaps the first thing she needed to do was figure out why she was sent here in the first place, and maybe when she figured this out she could find out how to get home.

_No, silly. You said you would just blend in for now,_ she reminded herself.

That's all she could do, after all. Sitting up on her bed, Mion figured she would start to do just that. She opened up the draw to the nightstand and began to sort through the papers, eventually coming to a sheet that was completely blank. She grabbed a pencil that happened to be lying out there and put the sheet of paper down on the nightstand.

Then, she began to write.

_One: This world's version of me is Shion, not Mion. She did not receive the tattoo on that day._

It was the most obvious and basic thing and formed a basic idea on how her personality could be in this world. If she acted like Shion, she could get along.

_Two: She hasn't seen this world's Mion (known to me as Shion) in over a year, probably due to family reasons._

It wasn't really a fact about her personality, but she needed to take note of it if it came up with conversations with someone so she didn't sound suspicious. She suspected it to be family matters, since she had to endure something similar in her own world. When Shion was sent off to boarding school, she was forced to be without her sister for a year, even on family events where they would usually gather like New Years and her own birthday.

_Three: Seems to be careless when it comes to cleaning, but at least tries. Perhaps her carelessness can apply to other things?_

She didn't quite know about that one, but it was good to note. Still, though, that didn't mean that she was going to continue to sleep in a somewhat messy room. It would irritate her a little too much, and she could always come up with the excuse that she decided to work a little harder on keeping neat.

She couldn't think of anything else after that, so she dropped her pencil and slid the paper into the drawer. Sighing, the girl collapsed on her bed.

_Well, I guess I should clean this place up a little more. This place is too messy._

Mion moved to the wardrobe and began to sort through her clothing, folding and stuffing them neatly in piles inside. She noted that a lot of her clothing resembled the clothing that Shion wore, some even being the same. She found this strange for a moment, but she did note that the type of clothing they stuck to came from the time where they were children, where their mother would insist on putting Mion in t-shirts and jeans and Shion in girly dresses and skirts. That was probably why Shion had her clothing back in the hospital.

She put each and every piece of clothing away nicely in the wardrobe, making sure that no sleeves stuck out of the drawers or anything like that. After that was done, she shut it and began to move over to her desk. A cup that was full of pencils and pens had spilled out across her desk, leaving an array of colorful pens, pencils, and markers all about. She quickly collected the writing utensils and put them back in the cup, setting it up nicely so that it wouldn't spill over.

Then, she began to sort through a bunch of papers that were on her desk. A lot of them just had some random scribbles on it that she didn't really bother to look at. It must have been one of the things she liked to do when she got bored, Mion figured. Putting the drawings aside in one pile, she began to look through the rest of the paper.

That was when something caught her eye.

It was a letter that was addressed to her.

_Dear Shion, _

_Hello, Shion. It's been a while. How have you been doing? Are you hanging on? I'm a little worried about you, to be honest. It's been about a year since I've seen you in person and I haven't written a letter in a while. Sorry! Family matters are terrible. Batcha still won't let me come and see you. She's too cruel…_

_I hope you're okay. I think about you every day. Did that make you feel better?_

_From, Mion._

Upon looking around more in her desk, she found that there were more letters that Shion had written her. Looking through them, she discovered a lot of things. Shion always wrote to her about how family matters had been going for her and the things that she has learned, and sometimes what the meetings were like and what they were planning for Hinamizawa. It was very interesting to the girl, especially a few letters in particular. They each had a date on them, so Mion began to sort them by chronological order so she could get a good look into Shion's life, as well as her own.

Most letters were mostly the same thing. However, there was one particular letter that really stood out to her.

_Dear Shion,_

_I hope everything has been okay for you. I've heard a little about how you have been doing for Kasai, and it doesn't sound very good. I'm going to talk to Batcha today about you, and if you can move in. I hope that she says yes. Then, we can spend every single day together and you can meet my friends!_

_In fact, a few days ago, a boy named Maebara Keiichi moved here. He's a really nice guy and he's really fun. He has a very high spirit and has this determination to never give up, and he certainly makes me feel the same way! He's just cheers everyone up through his sheer determination and funny personality. Actually, when I first met him, I though to myself "wow, this is just the guy that Shion needs to meet." I mean it. You would love him. He's just the kind of guy you need! So I really want you to move and meet him. _

_You just need some cheering up._

_I will tell you what Batcha says._

_From, Mion._

Mion felt a blush grow across her face as she read that letter, thinking of the boy that she had come to know and love. From Shion's letter, she could confirm that he was indeed in this world. In fact, he seemed very similar to the Keiichi she knew and loved. Was he any different? From this letter, Mion couldn't tell. But of course the next letter from Shion said her plan was a failure, so the two of them had yet to meet in this universe.

She really did want to meet him again, though. If he really were the same, it would be comforting to know that he was indeed unchanged and something close to where she came from. As she read through the letter again, Mion wondered what Shion meant by "he's just the kind of guy you need." Was she implying something romantic, or was the line just meant to be in a friend way? Knowing Shion, it would be romantic, but she could never know with _this_ Shion. Perhaps she wasn't the type to tease.

She did seem to have some characteristics of Shion, Mion noted, though.

_Dear Shion,_

_Hello! I heard from Kasai that you haven't been doing so great lately so I decided to write this letter to cheer you up a little more. I don't want my precious little sister to be unhappy! Here, take a look at this:_

Underneath those words was a crudely drawn picture of a puppy, with a stick-like tail and wobbly legs that no one could stand up on. Its face stood out greatly, with a wobbly oval head and bulging, round eyes that seemed to have nothing more than a dot for pupils. Its ears were crooked, and one seemed to be bigger than the other. Spots decorated the whole body, some of them being more like patches and some resembling the spots they were supposed to. Mion couldn't help but grin.

_Yeah, I know. It's not very good, but I heard that you have started to learn to draw to make yourself happy. I want to see your drawings, Shion! I bet they are better than mine. What have you being drawing? Cats? Dogs? People? (If it's dogs, it's hopefully better than mine.) Or have you been drawing something… inappropriate? Come on; don't hide it from your big sis! Tell me everything! _

_ Haha, that was a joke. Really, I doubt it. But please let me know!_

_ I love you._

_ From, Mion._

She smiled at that letter. It did seem like something Shion would do. When she wasn't in teasing mode, she was the best sister anyone could ever ask for. Mion loved her and had long ago decided that she wouldn't trade her for anyone else in the world. Sometimes, she wondered if she cared about her more than she cared about herself, and if the same applied to Shion. The two of them were close, even in this universe, where they hadn't even seen each other for a year. Such a thing just went to show how much they loved each other.

Mion sorted through more letters, reading through them happily. Through them, she learned several things about Shion and herself. Shion didn't seem to be very different in this universe in terms of personality, which was something htat made Mion smile. It was very nice reading letters that spoke about how much fun was having. The type of fun she spoke about was exactly what Mion had gotten because of her position as the heir. Knowing that she was happier in this universe made Mion happier herself, even if she was Shion here. Once again, she sometimes cared about her sister more than herself and this was one of those times.

As for herself, she learned many things, though mostly not having to do with personality. First of all, she had been sent to boarding school, but she never did any of her work and was kicked out for that same reason, along with not following quite a few of the rules. She giggled a little at that. She must have been really bad at school if Shion, who had her same carefree attitude towards school, hadn't been kicked out. She had been living in her apartment with Kasai for a few months now, and she hadn't been doing much aside from scribbling a few things on sheets of paper and occasionally having conversations with Kasai. Really, she didn't spend a lot of time doing much.

In fact, she didn't seem to ever respond to her sister's kind letter. But Shion didn't seem to mind much, as she sent them anyway. That just went to show how much she really cared, sending letters even if her sister didn't respond.

However, things quickly became odd when she looked at the last letter Shion had sent to her.

_Dear Shion,_

_Hang in there._

_ From, Mion._

That was all that was written. She looked over it up and down, but she still couldn't find any other words. It was odd, Mion thought, but perhaps there hadn't been much more to say. Deciding not to think about the matter too much, Mion put the letters to the side and relaxed in the chair. With all that sorted, there wasn't much more in her room to do. She had read through all the letters needed and she had done all her cleaning. She could now relax.

She went down back to the bed and began to write a little.

_Four: Was kicked out of school for being lazy with work, among other things._

This contributed to the above. She just didn't care enough to put away her clothing in the right way or clean up properly, so that added to the idea that she was a very carefree person.

_Five: Draws a lot to keep herself entertained._

Mion noted that she probably wasn't nearly as good as drawing as she was in this world, so she decided she'd come up with some excuse to stop drawing so no one became suspicious. Perhaps she would tell someone that she decided to take a break from drawing and spend her time doing something else. Perhaps something she was good at already, like practicing her skills in games.

She couldn't think of much else, though, so she put away the paper and lay down on her bed, giving herself some time to think about what actions she would take. She needed to blend in further, and in order to do that; she needed to discover just how her friends were in Hinamizawa. Of course, that was going to be hard. She couldn't go to Hinamizawa due to who she was in this world. That was the only way she could think of seeing her friends.

But… what if she could find a way to go to Hinamizawa? An idea sparked in her mind.

The girl shot up from her bed and ran over to the desk, pulling out a fresh sheet of paper and a pencil. Quickly, she began to write.

_Dear Mion,_

_ Hello, Onee! I'm so glad to hear about how things have been for you at the Sonozaki Estate. As for my fall off the cliff, you shouldn't worry. It wasn't your fault at all. It was nice seeing you again. I hope you never forgot how much I loved you, and I still do! That's why I'm writing this letter. Well, actually, it's one of the reasons for writing this letter._

_ I want to move to Hinamizawa, Onee. I really do. I know Onibaba said no hundreds of times, but I want you to ask her once again. Convince her in any way you can. I just really want to meet your friends. I want to have more friends, Onee. You're the only one I can trust aside from Kasai. Please, Onee. Don't give up this time. Tell Onibaba to let me move here. What did I ever do to her aside from be born second? Tell her that. Tell her that I deserve to move there and meet friends._

_ I love you._

_ From, Shion._

Mion grabbed an empty envelope and sealed the letter inside. She took it in one hand and walked out of the door.

Kasai was at the table, reading a book to himself. Why he wasn't in his room, Mion didn't know, but that was the last of her concerns. She walked right up to him, causing him to drop the book and look at her.

She dropped the letter down on the table.

"Please mail this to Onee, Kasai," she said with a stern look on her face.

Kasai looked surprised by the request. "This is the first time you've responded to her…" he said as he took the envelop in his hand, studying it. "Of course I'll send it to her. Shion-san, I think she'll be delighted."

Mion nodded with a smile on her face, mimicking how Shion would smile perfectly. "Well yes, I hope these letters pick my big sis up! That's what I'm here for, after all!" cried Mion, placing her hands on her hips and striking a triumphant pose. "If that wasn't true, then I'm not Sonozaki Shion!"

Kasai's expression was unreadable, but he seemed somewhat uneasy.

"Anyways, I hope you mail it to my sis," she said, dropping the triumphant tone. "And I hope that she responds."

Kasai nodded.

After a little while of silence, Mion walked over to the refrigerator. She opened it up and looked at the contents inside. There wasn't much that would make for a good snack, she noted, but there was a lot of food that would be good if it were to be cooked.

"Hey, Kasai, when's dinner?" she asked, staring at the refrigerator. "I'm getting kind of hungry."

He stood up right away, walking over to the refrigerator. "I'll start making it right away," he said. "If that's what you want."

Mion nodded. "I am feeling quite hungry…"  
>"Then I'll start cooking."<p>

Mion sat back down at the table as Kasai began to take various things out from the refrigerator. He began to take a few things out from the cabinets above as well, pulling out pans as well as a few other kinds of equipment that he would need. Mion was a good chef, but she wasn't sure that this her was so she decided to let Kasai cook instead. It seemed a little rude of her, but it was the one thing that she could do for now. She didn't want to make it look like she had randomly pulled a talent that she didn't have before out of a magic hat.

She watched as Kasai made dinner. He was rather good with skills, Mion noted. She had heard stories about how good he was as a chef from Shion, though she had never really gotten to take a look at how good he was up close or taste any of his food. Of course she hadn't tasted any of the food yet, so there was no way she could know if he truly was great like Shion said he was, but for now she could assume.

She went over a few things in her head as Kasai finished making dinner. Hopefully she would get the letter back from Shion soon, and hopefully her grandmother would have accepted her. It was a long shot, though. Mion doubted that Oryou liked her in this world. There was a lot of evidence, most of it coming from the letters, but Mion had to note that the old woman didn't even to bother visiting her in the hospital after she had fallen off the cliff.

_Goes to show how much that old woman cares, huh? Really…_

Kasai finished dinner and placed the finish product in front of her. It was a rather large steak, and a rather simple one at that. There were a few vegetables on the side but otherwise nothing about the steak seemed to make it very special. Not that Mion cared, though. She really did love steak and a good steak was enough for her.

She took a bite of her steak and swallowed. It _was_ really good. Kasai did have a talent. Suddenly, she grew rather excited. She would get to taste more from him later, and judging by this simple steak, he could surely cook a lot of good things.

"Wow, Kasai! I almost forgot how good you were!" she exclaimed loudly after having swallowed a large mouthful. "It feels like it's been a forever since I tasted this!" She dug in further. "When did you learn to cook?"

Kasai hadn't eaten much of his steak, though. He was spending his time looking at Mion and watching her actions. Mion wished she knew what he was thinking, but it was nearly impossible to tell behind those thick sunglasses. It was easier when he was clearly expressing worry back at the hospital, but when his emotions weren't as strong it really didn't show. She wondered why he wore those sunglasses all the time, anyways. It wasn't particularly bright out or anything.

"I just felt it would be necessary for me," he said. "After I left the yakuza, I decided to practice with things like cooking."

"Well, you're one good chef!" yelled Mion enthusiastically. She bit down more on her steak, swallowing large bites and occasionally eating up the vegetables. The vegetables were rather well cooked, too. If you were to judge him based on food and not see his face, you would never know that he used to be a member of the yakuza. "I'm glad that you decided to learn how to cook. It's fun, and it certainly does well for your job!" she said, a grin on her face.

"Shion-san," Kasai said in a voice so stern that it scared her.

Mion blinked at the sudden voice, and she could feel the cheerful atmosphere she had created suddenly die. "Huh, Kasai? What is it?" she asked him, a look of confusion plastered across her face.

"…This is the first time I have seen you smile in over a year," he said.

_…Huh? _That was the one thing that came to Mion's mind the moment she heard those words. _The first time I've smiled in a year? …What…?_ She looked at Kasai, a look of shock plastered across her face. She knew it seemed unnatural and probably unusual for this Mion, who would have known that, but she couldn't hide her shock. _Is that really true? Is this Mion… has she not smiled… in a year?_

"Your mother and father told me she thought something was odd at the hospital, and I agree. I don't know if the fall did something to your head or something like that… but… you aren't acting like yourself anymore. The Shion-san I know… would never start up conversations at the table, she would never smile at me, she would never write a letter to her sister, she would never do anything. She would just sit there and look hollow and empty… all day long," he spoke gravely. He looked down at the table, a look of sadness able to be seen on his face, even through the sunglasses. "Don't get me wrong, Shion-san. Please don't go back to being like that. I like this Shion. It's just very strange and sudden."

Mion really had no idea how to react. She knew that she should hide her look of shock as quickly as possible, but for some reason, she found herself unable to even do that. Was that really how this Mion was, then? Was she really broken like that? This was nothing like she would think she would be, and completely different from how she had been acting. She knew there was no way to fix it anymore, that she had to come up with some excuse.

"…Ahaha… hahah!" Mion suddenly laughed, although very nervously. "Well, you know, I guess the fall did something because I don't feel empty or hollow at all! Nope! Not one bit! I feel like the happiest girl in the world right now! Ahahaha…"

"Is that so…" whispered Kasai. Then he looked up at her suddenly, and Mion had a feeling that his eyes were staring right into hers behind those thick, black glasses of his. "Well then, Shion-san. Please continue to live that way. I don't ever want to see you like that again. Keep acting like this every single day, even if it seems like everything is wrong."

"Yeah! No more frowning or anything like that! I'm going to be happy forever from now on!" she declared loudly, sticking her fist up in the air as she spoke to put emphasis on the point. "Never again am I going to go back to being the old Shion!"

Well, maybe this could work, Mion thought. If she could pretend that the fall did something to her and that she was now a different person, everything would be okay. She did not want to have to act broken and dark like the actual "Shion" here had been. She would just be happy and act as Shion would back at her own world. Everything could work out fine, then. It would come as a shock to some, but still.

Kasai let out a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad, Shion-san. I guess that Mion-san's attempts at reaching out to your heart through her letters are finally working…"

That was another way to explain it. Shion's letters had indeed been touching and it cheered her up right away, so she could easily say that her sister's letters had snapped her out of it and brought her back to a happy, fun-loving Shion. That was actually a better way of explaining it. It wasn't like a fall off a cliff would ever do anything good to you, though then there was the problem of how she had been acting back at the hospital. _Well, whatever the case is, I'm going to act happy from now on. I don't care how this old Shion was, but this Shion here is happy, no matter what the case may be!_

"I'll be mailing that letter to your sister shortly. She'll be very glad to hear that you are acting like this. I know you haven't seen her in a year, but every time I stop by the Sonozaki Estate Mion-san asks me how you are, and if you read her letters. She always has this look of concern on her face… and when I tell her that you have not been better, she always looks like she wants to cry." He looked up at the ceiling. "And now I can tell her that you are feeling better… and I won't have to endure the pain of looking at such a broken girl and her upset sister. It nearly killed me on the inside every time I saw that look."

Mion nodded. "I'm glad, too. Tell Onee that I'm feeling ten times better, okay?" she requested.

"Of course. And I'll deliver this letter for you," he said.

"Thank you, Kasai!" cried Mion.

He nodded sternly. "It's no problem."

Everything looked like it was going to go right. Even if she was going to go back to her own world someday, a part of her told her that she wanted to make everyone here happy. Even if Mion may revert back to being depressed and hollow when she leaves, hopefully her efforts here were enough to cheer everyone up. In fact, now that she thought about it… Shion was a lot happier in this world, wasn't she? She had friends, she was accepted the family, she had her rightful place… And now, she would finally have a happy sister to cheer her up every single day, and there would be no more of that old sister who spent her days looking depressed. And soon, hopefully, that happy, fun-loving sister of hers would be by her side at Hinamizawa every day of every year.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**For some reason, something seems off about the position of the title of Crimso's Corner today. I think it's just me, though. Or maybe it's the fact that the italics make the title look bigger compared to the break? Oh well. I think it's just me and won't appear on FF. EDIT: Yes, it's normal. Oh microsoft word...**

**Hi. So this chapter brought up a little bit of information. I think this is more about getting to know the Mion who used to be there before Mion came and took her place for whatever reason (spoilers!). I'm planning on doing this quite a bit. I want you to get a little bit for the feel of the world first. A good piece of literature will always let you get to know the characters and book before something TOO dramatic happens. I've read books that didn't follow that and… let's just say I couldn't get through the whole thing. I hope you understand. Really, this fanfiction is going to get the pace picked up as well as the horror element. Really, it's like when you're playing **_**Robot Unicorn Attack**_** and then you switch to playing **_**Robot Unicorn Attack: Heavy Metal. **_**Okay… eighty percent of you won't get the metaphor, fifteen will punch me in the face, and five will… do something. But really. That's what it's like. S-Seriously! W-What? Why are you looking at me like that?**

**I want to address something I forgot to address in the previous Crimso's Corners, which really should be done. ****Here's a question you may be asking if you have read my other fanfictions: How is this similar to BFB and GED and how is it different?**

**Here is my answer. This is definitely very different from GED and BFB in a number of ways. GED and BFB are much more closely related than WAN to either of them. First of all, there is NO demons. Not a single one. GED and BFB was heavily centered on demons but this one isn't at all, so that's a pretty big difference. Think of it as a break. The next fanfiction is a GED rewrite that's approximately three times the original's length so we're going to be seeing a lot of demons them. And how is it similar? I can think of one connection to GED total, and it is very similar in a number of ways in different in another number of ways. I obviously won't say how. That is about the extent. Some other similarities may pop up along the way but I'm thinking of one.**

**That being said, I hope you enjoy as we continue to dive further into this world.**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: In the spirit of the rest of the internet today... DOWN WITH SOPA!**

**P.S.S: I'm getting a terrible amount of deja vu right now just by looking at the sentence above. I feel like this has happened before. (I hate Deja vu)**


	4. Chapter 3: Stepping Forwards

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Hi. This is the first chapter stared in class! I'm in English class and I'm done with my work and revising my piece, so I'm all good to go for writing right now. I was writing a memoir for English, actually. I messed up majorly… I realized this as we were talking in class. And then my English teacher has us annotate our memoir for themes, and then he says we can wait to turn it in and revise. **_**THAT WAS SO CLOSE**_**.**

**Note: Skipping about…**

**Note: Smaller chapters for now. They may get bigger later, but no promises. Well, I'm pretty sure they will.**

**Note: Remember that this is an AU and Shion's personality may be a bit different. Also, Mion's trying to act a little different, too. This will apply for other characters but we haven't gotten there yet.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Three: Stepping Forwards_

A few days later, Mion found herself sitting on her bed, doing almost nothing. The last few days had been rather boring for her as she awaited a response from her sister. Kasai had mailed the letter a little while ago, though she supposed it hadn't come yet or Shion was still attempting to convince Oryou to let her move in. Either way, she hadn't responded yet and left Mion doing nothing for the last few days.

She had been hoping that when she woke up each day, that maybe she would end up back in her world. But every time she did, she was always right where she went to sleep. It seemed that randomly waking up back in her world wasn't the answer. Sure, she had done it to get there, but that was contributed by the fact that she had fallen off a cliff. This could be the way to get back, but she didn't want to risk jumping off a cliff and possibly dying for real.

Whatever the case was, she was stuck here for now. She needed to make the best of her situation, and maybe one day she would find out the truth behind her arrival and how to get back to her own world.

Kasai had left to tend to other matters a little while ago, leaving Mion all alone. With a grumble, the girl decided to get out of bed. She was a little disappointed from not having gone back to her world this morning, but she figured she should have assumed that. She had been here for a few days.

_I should get dressed._

She finally pulled herself out and wandered towards the wardrobe in the corner. Reached for a drawer, she pulled it open and then gathered a few articles of clothing, hardly thinking about what she was doing.

The girl dressed herself in the clothing, and when she was done, she turned to the mirror to take a good look at herself. She was wearing her sister's white, somewhat striped shirt with golden beads at the neckline, along with the usual black, buttoned skirt. A yellow ribbon was tied in her hair in the way that Shion usually did. As Mion stared at her reflection in the mirror, she realized that if she had just seen this picture of herself, she would have thought it was her sister. She looked exactly like her in every way.

She wandered over to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of juice, then sitting down at the table. She began swirling around the cup of orange juice and watching as a miniature whirlpool was briefly created. She took sips every now and then, but her mind wasn't focused on the drink and instead what she was going to do. When she moved to Hinamizawa… well, _if_ she moved to Hinamizawa, she would get to know her friends. She didn't know what circumstances they were under, but if Shion and her hadn't been swapped in this world, it was highly possible that they were under circumstances that were different from the world that she was from.

She did know that from the letters that she had read, Keiichi appeared to be the same person she knew. He certainly did have a funny personality and was really a person who brought people's spirits up with his determination. In fact, that was one of the ways that she would describe him if she had to, and probably the first way that would come to mind. She was glad to know that there was at least one person who didn't seem different.

As for the others… she didn't know. They could be all kinds of different or the same. Perhaps Shion and her swapping was the only difference here. Perhaps everything else was normal. There was a large chance, though, that they were also different. Perhaps someone else in the club, like Rika, was nothing like she used to be. Maybe she was a rude, stubborn person who didn't like people giving her attention and was not cute in terms of personality in the slightest. She could also be a very hyperactive person who loved to bother people. Perhaps even a bored girl who did nothing but sit there and think about food all day. Those were all possible. She didn't know what the circumstances of this world were.

Of course, people she saw weren't that different other than her and Shion. Her mother seemed to be the same kind of person, her father did too, and Kasai was definitely the same as he was back in her own world. Maybe that was because she didn't get a good look at them, though. Kasai she was able to talk to a lot, and he seemed the same, but maybe there was a difference that didn't affect his personality.

_Well, there's no way to know unless I find out for myself while living here. I think I should just leave it at this for now._

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden knock at the door, and she instantly put down her orange juice at the sound of it. She got up right away and placed a hand on the doorknob, beginning to pull it open.

"Kasai? Is that you?" Mion asked.

"No. It's me," a familiar voice spoke out.

When Mion got a full look at the person before her, a delighted smile grew across her face. "Sh— … Onee!" Mion cried out at once, hoping that her sister didn't catch her little slip up. Before her was none other than her own identical twin sister, who was, as usual, wearing what was usually her yellow shirt and blue jeans. She really did look like herself then, and for a moment she forgot that she actually _was _Shion.

Thankfully, Shion didn't seem to notice that she had accidently called her the wrong name. She simply smiled at her sister, seemingly very glad to see her. "Shion! It's been too long!" she cried out. She ran towards her sister at once, catching her in a tight embrace. The hug seemed to last for an eternity, with neither of them wanting to let go. Shion enjoyed it, probably because she missed her sister, and Mion did because she found it very comforting. She always enjoyed the presence of her sister, and it was especially nice now considering that a lot had happened in the last few days.

They finally pulled away from each other, smiling as they looked into each other's eyes.

"It's good to see you, Onee," Mion spoke truthfully.

Shion smiled warmly, much like how she would usually smile. "It's good to see you too, Shion. I'm sorry I haven't been able to visit. Batcha's been a little… Well… well, she hasn't been anything different from usual. You know how she is, though."

"I know how she is," said Mion. Then, she paused for a few seconds. "Did you get my letter?"

She nodded. "That's why I came here." She turned around and glanced towards the table. "Why don't we sit down and talk?"

"Sounds good."

The twins wandered over to the table and sat down, one across from the other. Mion pulled her orange juice back towards her, moving to take a sip briefly before returning her gaze to her older sister.

"Do you want anything to drink or eat, Onee?" Mion asked. "I have a lot of snacks and drinks here, as well as leftovers from yesterday's dinner. Kasai cooks some really good food."

Shion shook her head. "I ate before, but thanks for the offer," she said.

Mion nodded. "All right." There was a brief silence following that, with none of them really knowing what to say. After a little bit, Mion decided that she should speak up. "So, what did you want to talk to me about, exactly? Does it involve the letter that I sent you a few days ago?"

"Yeah, that's exactly why I came here, in fact." Shion took out the letter from her pocket and placed it down on the table. She took the time to scan it and look over its contents before returning her gaze to her sister. "I was surprised when you sent me a letter, Shion. No…" she looked at her sister, staring into those happy green eyes of her. "I'm surprised that you look like this now… even after all that I have heard about you in the last year…"

Mion could only grin nervously at her. "After I came back from the hospital, I was looking over the letters you had sent me. I realized that you were really trying to reach out to me, Onee. It really did warm up my heart, and I realized what I needed to do now." She looked at her in the eyes, seriousness in hers. "And that's why I sent you that letter, Onee. Because I know I don't want to live here anymore. I want to be in Hinamizawa with you and all your friends, even if Batcha doesn't want it."

There was a sigh of relief that came out from Shion's mouth. "I'm so glad, Shion. I've been sending those letters for ages, hoping that it would reach out and warm your heart. You had no idea how much it hurt when they took you away from me, Shion. I was ready to tear out the heart of the man who drove you off to that damn school." She clenched her fists, a look of anger on her face. For a moment, it scared Mion. When her sister got angry, she practically set the room on fire with the flames of her rage. However, she seemed to dump a pail of water on that flame was soon as she could. "Anyways, I'm glad that you decided to read them and take in what I was saying, and I'm glad that you want to move in with me…"

Mion blinked at her sister. Did she talk to her grandmother yet about it?

"Anyways, I haven't said anything to Batcha yet. When I read your letter, I instantly got up from my seat and to Batcha, and I was about to tell her… but…" she looked down into her lap. "I was a little afraid of what she would say. She… well, you know how she feels about you. But I was thinking that maybe my convincing skills weren't enough. Maybe if you were there, too…"

Mion caught the implications instantly. "So, you're saying you want me to come with you and convince her to let me move in?" she asked.

"Yeah, that was what I was planning." She turned her gaze away from her lap so that she could look her sister back in the eye. "Honestly, I think that it would work better if the two of us were to talk to her. Shion, I know she acts like she doesn't like you, but I get this feeling that that's not really how she feels about you. Maybe if you were to come with me and talk to her… we could open up the part of her that's hiding away, the part of her that truly wants to let you move in but can't because of what's expected of her."

Well, to Mion, that certainly sounded like how her grandmother would act. She would never admit her true feelings because of what was expected of her as a leader, partially because of reputation and partially because of fear that people would view her, the great head of the Sonozaki family, as weak. That was the last thing that she wanted as the head of the family. This is what caused quite a few problems, like the village's hate of Satoko and certainly Shion's acceptance in the other world.

However, she realized that she wasn't supposed to assume that this was true about her grandmother in this world, as there was no way she would have known it. Shion was pretty sure that her grandmother was just an evil, cruel person back in the other world. As Shion here, Mion realized that she should go ahead and assume the same.

"Are you sure about that, Onee? Do you really think that Onibaba has another side to her?" cried Mion, trying to sound as convincing as possible. She was thankful for all the times they had swapped places in the past. It had given her a gift for acting.

Shion nodded. "She's always like that. I know that you don't think that way, but that's because you never really got to know her. Trust me, Shion! We can reach out to her together!"

Mion gave herself some time to think. It would certainly be interesting going over there and seeing how her grandmother thought of her in this world. She knew how it felt to be hated by her grandmother and the family, as that was how it was when she was a little girl, but it would be interesting to relive that experience. "Of course I'll go with you! I really want to move to Hinamizawa and live with you, even if that means trying to convince Onibaba! I think I believe you, Onee. Onibaba may have a side like that…"

The older one of the twins smiled. "Shion!"

Then, Mion turned to her sister, nodding determinedly. "Yeah, I'll definitely do it! That Onibaba of mine can't really be that scary! It's been decided!" She shot her a determined grin, one that probably would have been more suited for her role back in the Hinamizawa she had come from.

"Good!" she cried out.

Mion grinned. "When do you think we should go?" she asked.

Shion stood up. "Right now! I've got it all planned out and why not? You have nothing to do, anyways." She turned towards the door. "Come on!"

That was sudden, Mion thought. Well, whatever the case was, Shion was right. She really didn't have anything to do here at this old apartment, and it was certainly better spending her time trying to convince her grandmother to let her move into Hinamizawa. "All right!" she yelled, standing up and following after her sister. She didn't quite know how she was going to get her grandmother to let her move in, but there had to be some way. As much as she liked Kasai's company, Mion knew that she would certainly prefer it over in Hinamizawa with her sister and her friends, and that it would be better for her, anyways. She needed to find out the circumstances of this world.

Mion suddenly felt something being placed on top of her head, and when she strained her eyes upwards to see what it was, she found that Shion had placed a hat on her head, one with a peak. Turning towards her sister, she noticed that there was a serious expression on her face.

"Careful. Just in case she doesn't let you, it'll be better to cover your face with this. We'll still look a lot alike but I don't think anyone will be suspicious if they don't see your face," Shion told her in a very stern tone.

She was right. She was supposed to hide her identity and her existence from everyone, and back in Mion's world, Shion often managed to get by outside because people assumed that she was her. This was the same in this world. This led Mion to conclude that the little incident with the fingernails hadn't happened, and that she had yet to be forgiven for her existence. She gulped and instinctively gripped her hands, feeling a tingling sensation in her fingernails. Back in the real world, Shion had had to have three of her fingernails _ripped_ off when her identity was discovered, and Mion had took it upon herself to do the same so they could share the pain. It was a brutal and horrible sensation, and the pain was unbearable. The last thing she wanted to do was have to rip out her fingernails again.

Well, unless it meant her staying in Hinamizawa. For that, she would do anything…

"Okay. But make sure I don't run into anything!" cried Mion.

Shion smiled. "Of course!"

With that, the two of them wandered out of the apartment and through the building, then out on the streets. Mion pulled the peak over her eyes, hoping that no one would notice anything. Of course, if someone did, it wasn't likely that they would inform the Sonozaki family. It was much more likely that he or she would just be horribly, horribly confused and perhaps conclude that the two Mions were just his or her imagination.

Before they could take their first step, however, Mion felt something warm touch her hand. She turned towards her hand and watched as Shion's fingers intertwined with her own, then squeezing tightly. She looked up to her sister, who was smiling right at her.

"You said to make sure you didn't run into anything, didn't you?" Shion said, smiling warmly.

"Ah, I did. Thanks, Onee!" responded Mion, realizing what the meaning behind her sister's actions were.

The two of them walked hand in hand down the streets of Okinomiya, with Mion's hat covering her eyes. Shion was doing a good job of making sure she didn't run into things or people, much to Mion's delight. The last thing she wanted was to run into a pole that jabbed her right in the stomach or something similar to that. As they walked down, though, Mion couldn't help but wonder if any of the villagers noticed anything about the two of them. She was sure that no one would comment, but if it was a Sonozaki…. Mion shook her head. She couldn't think about the negative. All she needed to do was convince Oryou and then the matter of anyone seeing her would be solved.

"Do any of your friends know about me?" Mion asked.

Shion shook her head. "I'm not supposed to bring you up, as you know, and the topic of siblings has never come up during conversations, so…" She paused. "Don't feel offended."

"No, I'm not offended. You're just doing what you need to as the heiress," Mion responded.

"Good…" replied Shion's somewhat uneasy voice.

The two of them eventually reached a bus stop and got on the bus that took people to Hinamizawa. It was usually only used for people who were from the village, so she hoped that no one would notice her. Mion casually sat next to her sister, pretending that she didn't even know who she was as she looked down and adjusted the peak of her hat.

"I think my friends will be happy to meet you," whispered Shion in a very careful manor, mostly so that it didn't draw attention to the two of them. "Really… it's always nice having a new friend."

"I hope so, too. I'm excited to meet the kind of people you're friends with," she whispered back, hoping that no one was noticing the conversation between the two of them. "Well, considering that we _can_ convince Onibaba…"

"We can," responded Shion. "It'll be tough, but we can. We just need to fight for it."

Mion sure hoped that was true.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After a little while on the bus, the two of them exited it and wandered down the pathways of Hinamizawa very carefully. There weren't many people out at this time of day, thankfully, and if they were they were probably in Okinomiya instead. It took a little while for them to reach the Sonozaki Manor, but when they did, Mion lifted up the peak of her cap so that she could get a good look at it. As she thought, it hadn't changed one bit.

The Sonozaki Manor was a very large place, to say the least. The Sonozaki family, being very rich, had basically bought a whole garden and placed a huge mansion in the middle of it. The whole place was big enough to fit a mountain! There were all kinds of things in the garden, including flower patches, a forest, a pond that contained koi, a small stream that led to the pond, some sculptures, and a lot more. It had been a wonderful place for her and Shion when they were both children. They had countless adventures in the garden and in the manor. It was perfect for a pair of little girls.

Shion opened the gate and they walked in, wandering down the pathways. Mion lifted up the peak of her hat and looked at what was ahead of her, now having no danger of being found out. Everyone here was a Sonozaki or a servant and knew about her existence, so there was no reason to hide her face. The pathway leading to the Manor was quite large, as the Manor was basically at the end of the garden. Mion took the time to look around at the garden, smiling. This whole place really was no different.

They reached the manor and Shion opened up the door, holding it open so that her sister could walk in. She thanked her sister as she entered the manor, then proceeding to remove her shoes. Again, the manor was no different from how it usually was. It was people that had changed, and not places. When she finished putting away her shoes, and when Shion had done the same, they turned towards each other.

"Don't be surprised if someone asks you why you're here. I think that Batcha may freak out a little at first…" Shion told her.

"Yeah, I know. I'm prepared for that," Mion responded.

"Good!"

The twins wandered down the hallway. It was a very long hallway, containing many sliding doors to many different rooms. Even Mion didn't know how many there were, as she had never bothered counting, but she did know where each and every single door led to. For example, the one she had just passed by was the guest room, and the one after that was the room that her mother and father would stay in whenever they were staying over, and no other guests were ever allowed to sleep there.

They eventually reached the door leading to Oryou's room, and Shion took a deep breath. "You wait out here for a minute, Shion. I'll talk to her briefly."  
>Mion did as she was told. It was probably for the better. If she were to just walk in there, Oryou would freak out more than she would than by just knowing that her second granddaughter was here.<p>

Shion slid open the door and slid in, leaving it open just a little bit. Mion stood behind the wall and away from the door, trying to hide her silhouette.

"Batcha?" said the older twin as she walked in.

"What is it, Mion?" came Oryou's grumpy voice. It seemed a little less irritated than usual for some reason, causing Mion to feel a little relieved. Then again, her mood could change in a second. It was possible that that slightness of a good mood would be dropped the moment she walked in.

There was a pause. "I need to talk to you about something," Shion said.

"Fine. What is it?" asked her grandmother's old voice.

"It's about Shion…"

Mion could hear a very loud sigh coming from her grandmother. "That again, Mion?"

"Batcha, I'm serous. I want her to move in with me. There's no reason why she shouldn't be able to!" cried Shion.

"We've discussed this so many times, Mion! That girl cannot live here!" yelled Oryou.

"Really, Batcha? Is that all you have to say? That she can't live here?" cried Shion back, sounding very angry and upset with her grandmother. "It's not like she's doing anything bad by just _living _here! She has her rights too, Batcha!"

"That's enough!" snapped Oryou. "This is the fifth time that you have tried to make me let her in here in the last two months! I have already told you many times that she can't, and my answer will not change no matter how many times you ask me! So the answer should be obvious!"

Mion shuddered. _Wow, Batcha's really against me moving here, isn't she?_ This was just her being stubborn, she decided. She was always like this when it came to matters of the Sonozaki family, especially with Shion. In all right, Shion should have been killed when she was born due to a tradition of the Sonozaki family that states that twins should be killed at birth, but she was spared. Mion had never really figured out why she had been spared, but she was certainly thankful for it. Because she was supposed to be dead and she lived, Oryou resented her very existence. She wondered if this Oryou actually liked Shion. She knew that the Oryou back in her world secretly loved them both but refused to admit it, but could the same be said for this one?

There was a growl. "Oh, well then…" There was a small pause. "Shion!" called Shion.

Mion took this as here cue to enter. She was a little nervous about it after hearing what her grandmother had been saying about her, but she had to be confident. It was just her grandmother.

When she entered the room, she saw a look of horror painting the old woman's face. The last thing she had been expecting was her second granddaughter to be right there. However, the shock was washed over by a tide of anger, and Mion prepared herself for what was to come.

"What in the world are you doing here, you brat?" demanded Oryou. "Who said that you could come here whenever you wanted? Have you forgotten the rules I have placed? You aren't allowed here! Go back to Okinomiya!"

She was about to say something in protest, but her sister intervened before she could. "Batcha, I was the one who said that she could be here. As the heiress, I have that right." She turned towards her sister. "I thought that it would be best for all of us to talk together. Shion said that she wanted to move here and I decided that this time, I would not give up. Shion is going to stay here with me, no matter what you say." She narrowed her eyes at her grandmother, looking fierce. "So just listen to us for a little bit."

Oryou grumbled. "Make it quick."

Shion nodded. "As you know, Shion's been ostracized from this family from a long time due to the fact that she's a whole five minutes younger than me." There was a little bit of sarcasm in her voice as she spoke those last words, showing that she thought it was ridiculous that five minutes could tear them miles apart. "And I think that it's been too long, Batcha. I know that it is a bad omen to have twin heirs, I know that you don't want anyone to know that you broke the twin rule because it would make people question the Sonozaki family. But does it really matter? You're hurting her, Batcha. Shion hurts. There's nothing wrong with letting her stay here and meet some friends for once!" she cried out. "It's just a stupid tradition! Why would anyone care if we broke it?"  
>Mion turned to her sister. She was speaking with such determination that it scared her. She was very serious about this matter, wasn't she?<p>

"I don't care. This brat is supposed to be dead. It's better just to pretend that she really is. She's as good as non-existent in the Sonozaki family and we don't need her." She turned towards her second granddaughter, not showing a hint of love for her in her harsh gaze. "There's no point in her staying here."

"And there's no point in her not staying here!" argued Shion. "Why can't she just move here and make some friends? Why are you forcing her to be ostracized? You're making her miserable, Batcha!" Suddenly, Mion was feeling the dark side of Shion come out. There was madness and anger in her eyes, and she could see her teeth clench tightly into a growl. "You just don't understand because you're heartless!"

Mion knew that Shion was scary and dangerous whenever she got too upset, and she was getting a little worried about her state right now. She needed to stop her before anything bad happened.

"Please," Mion said, looking at her grandmother. "I don't see how I'm hurting anyone by being here. I know we broke a tradition by keeping me alive… but… I don't think that means you should be hiding me from everyone."

"I told you a thousand times before. It's because you shouldn't exist. There's no reason to let anyone acknowledge your existence. You'll just get in the way of everything."

"No she won't!" yelled Shion. "You're just not thinking, Batcha! You know what? I think that—"

Mion held up a hand in front of Shion, telling her to stop before she got out of hand. She needed a way to settle this peacefully, hopefully without her sister breaking out into a rage and hurting someone. But how could she settle this and still allow herself to stay here…? At that moment, something clicked in Mion's mind.

"So you're saying I'll get in the way of family matters?" Mion said. "That makes sense. That's why the twin rule was created in the first place, to prevent a dispute between the twins over who was going to be the heir. But I'm not interested in that." She looked into her grandmother's eyes, seriousness in her green ones. "I don't want to be the heiress. That's Onee's job. If I move here, I promise you I won't get involved in family matters at all. I won't have a role int his family at all. The only thing I'll get is the privilege to reveal my identity and live as Sonozaki Shion with some friends, as well as live here. I'll even share a room with Onee." She turned towards her sister. That's how things were back at her world, and she hoped her sister had no problem with it. "So I won't get involved in the family and won't be getting in anyone's way. Is that fair?"

It was exactly how she had gotten her grandmother to let Shion move in back in her world. She had let Shion stay, saying that she could if she wasn't to get involved in the matters of the family. It had worked there, so why shouldn't it work here?

Her grandmother let out a sigh, and there were no words from her mouth for a long time. During the silence, Mion wondered if her words had worked on her. She didn't seem too angry right now and looked like she was seriously considering it. Then again, who knew with her grandmother? She could easily think about it and then refuse right away. She would be harsh, and Mion knew it. She had to be ready for what was to come.

However, what followed surprised her.

"Fine then. I'll accept," replied Oryou reluctantly. "But only under those conditions. You are not to involve yourself in the matters of the family and you will under no circumstances try to get the position as the heiress of the family from your sister. If you do, I'll send you right back to Okinomiya." She stared into her younger granddaughter's eyes, harshness and seriousness in them that made Mion shiver. "Do you understand?"

Excitement grew inside Mion. "Yes! Yes I do!" she practically cried out. "I promise you I won't get involved in the family!"

"Good. Then I'll inform the family about the changes. Pack your stuff up. You'll be moving in with your sister as soon as you can."

Mion turned towards her sister, who had excitement combined with disbelief painted on her face. She was glad. She could now meet up with her friends and live her life in Hinamizawa. Shion, on the other hand, looked extremely happy knowing that her sister would be with her, and that she wouldn't have to hide her identity and suffer anyone. It would be fun having her sister around.

She was one step closer to finding out the truth behind this strange world.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Whew. I think this is a good pace to be uploading chapters at, though I'm not sure if it's going to stay that way. We can hope, right? I got some time during Study Hall to work on it, thankfully. Study Hall on Fridays is usually replaced with encore band, much to everyone's annoyance. I mean, sure, we have a concert coming up and all that, but no one really cares about music class at my school because really, you get an A if you practice and a B if you don't. End of story. Study hall, to everyone, is much more important because it gives us time to do homework and improve grades in other sections. This also applies to me whenever I urgently need it. I don't always use Study Hall for WAN. Too bad we had to sacrifice break and homeroom to get study hall -_-.**

**That aside, I hope you're enjoying this so far. We have a slight change in the story, with Mion moving to Hinamizawa, but I'm sure you all knew that was going to happen. I hope I'm doing well with this Shion… she's sort of like a combination of both Mion and Shion in a sense, but leaning slightly more to the Shion side. You get what I'm saying by that? It's interesting to write this plot. It's also very fun.**

**Also… something I wanted to add. Uryuu-Nipaa asked me if EOG is going to be similar to GED, so I want to answer that question. The answer is: Yes in some ways in no in other ways. There's four parts of the story, which are around thirty chapters each, and maybe 200,00 words, so you can see how it would be different. There's a lot more content. However, a lot of the major things remain unchanged. Does that make sense? I don't want to give too much away about it, but I feel like that's something I needed to address, since I know it is a little bit of a risk rewriting this because I know people liked how it turned out. Don't just has **_**a ton **_**more content and **_**a lot **_**of ****plot lines. We have a long while until EOG, though, so it does feel odd to be talking about it now. I have a document that I am filling out with every detail and character. I usually don't do that, but it is needed for a fanfiction as long as this. I'm hoping that WAN won't be too long and will be a breather before I start on EOG.**

**~Crimso**


	5. Chapter 4: School Days

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Sundays are wonderful and horrible at the same time. Wonderful, because there is no school, and horrible because you know there is going to be school tomorrow. I'm pretty much screwed. Second quarter ends tomorrow and I have terrible grades in a lot of my classes. Math comes to mind because I ended up getting a sixty-four on my last test somehow… I think it was because I was really pissed off when I was doing the test and I couldn't get my mind in the right mood to do the test. Urgh. Here's hoping I do better in the third quarter. Really.**

**Note: Skipping a few days. Nothing important happens between these time skips, so don't worry.**

**Note two: Believe it or not, this chapter title has nothing to do with a NICE BOAT. Really.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Four: School Days_

A few days after the confrontation with Oryou, Mion found herself dragging her bags into her sister's room, or rather _their_ room, as it was called now. It had taken a while to convince a very concerned Kasai that going to school and moving into the Sonozaki Manor was, in fact, a good idea and that she could keep herself under control when it came to family matters. While Mion was used to meddling with such affairs, she knew that she had to keep herself away and kept repeating this in her head.

Allowing her bag to collapse on the ground of her sister's room, she looked around. It was rather messy, she noted. Shion was the type to leave her clothing out in the middle of the room for all to see, something that frequently bothered Mion. _Oh well. I'll make sure that I change that. She'll just have to get used to my habit of keeping things clean, just like how things are back at home._

"I'm so glad, Shion!" Shion was speaking as she zipped her sister's bag open for her. "Really, I am! It's going to be so much fun with you around. I'll no longer have to spend the days at home talking to my boring other relatives and you'll no longer be without friends! Trust me, Shion, you're going to love all my friends, and they're going to love you!"

She seemed very excited, to say the very least. This even seemed to be true despite the fact that it was around fifty thirty in the morning, the time where her sister was usually grumpy. Of course, the reason why was quite obvious. Mion had acted much the same way when Shion transferred into her school, though a lot of that was overshadowed by concern. Shion was the type to embarrass her sister whenever she got the chance to, simply because she thought it was fun, so of course that was something for Mion to be worried about. She of course did so, and Mion was thoroughly embarrassed each time, but that never completely outdid the fun they had. Most of the time, it increased it.

Of course, the Shion in this world had no such concern, because as far as she knew, Mion had no habit of embarrassing her sister. She was just excited by her sister moving in and nothing else.

"Did you tell your friends that I was transferring in?" asked Mion as she wandered over to the corner of the room and opened up the wardrobe. Shion had already cleared out one of the drawers so that Mion could fit her things in, decreasing the amount of work she needed to do. For that, Mion was thankful. At least Shion was being somewhat considerate about cleaning and preparing for her move in.

Shion nodded. "Yeah. When I told them that I had a sister and that she was transferring in, everyone was shocked! Not many of them believed me at first, but Chie-sensei, the teacher, confirmed it for me. They were surprised and demanded to know why I hadn't told them before," she explained to her as she began to carry some of Mion's clothing and put them in the wardrobe for her sister.

Mion quickly thanked Shion when she saw that she was helping her, who just nodded at her with a smile before continuing with putting away the clothing. "And what did you tell them?" she asked.

"Ahaha, well, I just told them it hadn't come up before so there was no need for me to mention you. I hope that didn't make it seem like I didn't like you or anything." Shion began to stuff more clothing in, making quite a mess of the wardrobe, though Mion was thankful for her efforts anyways. "You know what I meant when I said that. I thought it would be too harsh to mention the whole twin thing and how they hate you for being second born…"

"It doesn't sound harsh at all. It's much better than the alternative, isn't it?" Mion commented as she fixed up the clothing that Shion had practically thrown in the wardrobe. "I don't want the first impression of me to be 'that Sonozaki twin that was supposed to be killed at birth but didn't due to unknown reasons.' That would be kind of harsh and awkward," she said with a slight giggle.

"Of course! Which is why I omitted the details. Of course, the opportunity to mention you hasn't come up, so I guess it wasn't a complete lie." Shion noticed that her sister was trying to be a little neater, so Shion fixed up the pile of shirts she had just thrown into the wardrobe. "But I'm sure they'll all be happy to meet you anyways. It'll be a lot of fun!"

Mion turned to Shion, giving her a slight grin. "Aha, I bet." Then there was a brief pause, and Mion looked for words to speak. "What are your friends like?"

"Oh!" cried Shion suddenly. "I forgot to tell you about that! Well, I know I told you about the newcomer, Maebara Keiichi already. He's a really high-spirited guy and very determined. He can act a little silly at times, but really, he's a great person." Suddenly, and much to Mion's surprise, the older twin whipped around and her slight smile was replaced by a huge, mischievous grin. "Oh Shion~? I think you would like him. A lot."

Mion blinked in surprise. She would normally take such a comment to be "you would like him and be best friends," but coming from Shion, and especially with that mischievous smile on her face, Mion was sure that it meant something more than just friends. This was something that caused her face to flush red.

"E-Eh?"

The expression on the older green-haired girl's face didn't become any less mischievous when she saw the blush on her sister's face. In fact, if anything, Mion was sure that there was an increase of mischief. "Hehe… so you caught on to what I was talking about, dear sister? Yeah, I mean it like that. That Keiichi and you… I can see it already! You two haven't even met and I know you would be the perfect match!"

"O-Onee, you can't be serious!" cried Mion. _Yes. This Shion really isn't too different…_

Shion laughed. "But I am serious!" She smirked. "Oh, what's that, Onee? Is that a blush on your face…? Hehe, I can't believe it! I only said a few sentences about him and you already have a crush on him! Man, Shion, crushing on someone you've never talked to or seen? What are you, some kind of stalker?"

Mion buried her face in her hands. This Shion definitely wasn't much different, still having the habit of teasing her sister. Suddenly, Mion was a little concerned about what was going to happen at school. Was she going to have a bad impression due to her sister's teasing? She sure hoped she wouldn't try to push Keiichi and her together as soon as she met him, though she technically already knew who he was. She did, in fact, already have a crush on him but that was due to her actually knowing him already. Putting it like Shion did really did make her look like some sort of stalker.

"Haha. No, but seriously." The mischievous smile twisted into a genuine, kind one. "I really think that for someone like you, who has spent the last few years depressed, a little bit of romance will instantly patch you up. Kei-chan will be the perfect guy for you, Shion. He has this 'never give up' attitude that will always make you smile, and will prevent you from ever falling to that state again."

"Well, I guess we'll have to see," said Mion, not wanting to talk about the matter anymore. It was making her embarrassed.

_~~~~X~~~~_

"This is it, Shion! This is the school!"

Two hours later, Mion and Shion found themselves standing in front of the school building. Just like she was expecting, the school was small and had no changes from the way it was back at her world. Knowing that Shion was expecting her to be shocked by the small size of the school, Mion put on her best look of surprise as she stared up at the tiny building.

"It's so small though, Shion!" cried Mion, hoping her acting sounded genuine. "Really, how many people does this school hold? !"

Shion giggled. "Less than fifty. I know it's much smaller than that stupid boarding school you went to, but that's to be expected seeing as it's just a day school and in small Hinamizawa rather than the big city." She looked towards the girl, grinning. "We need to go to the teacher's office before we can go into class. It's about to start, by the way, but I think that Chie-sensei will still be in her office. I'll take you there, so follow me."

Mion and Shion walked into the building and down the hallway. The whole building was rather small, to say the least. There were only a few rooms in the whole building. First, there was the rather small classroom. Second, there were the bathrooms. Third, there was Chie's office and the principle's office. And finally, there was the nurse's room, which was only sometimes used for minor injuries. Really, the local clinic was better to go to.

Shion stopped in front of what Mion knew to be Chie's office, and she then proceeded to open the door. The familiar scent of curry greeted the two of them, and Mion couldn't help but giggle a little. It looked like this Chie wasn't that different from the real one, still retaining that love for curry. Thankfully, Shion didn't seem to notice this and walked inside.

"Chie-sensei!" she called out.

The blue-haired teacher turned around. "Hello, Sonozaki-san! I presume you're here to bring your sister?" she asked.

Shion nodded. "Mhm! She's here." She turned around towards her sister, then gesturing for the girl to come inside with a quick hand movement.

Mion stepped inside the office, looking about. The office, as usual, smelled of curry. It was a rather small office, containing only a desk for Chie to sit at as well as a bookcase and a very small refrigerator, which Mion assumed was used to store all kinds of curry. Chie was currently sitting in a rather uncomfortable looking chair in front of the desk, staring at them. When she saw Mion, she gasped loudly.

"Oh my, the two of you look exactly alike," she commented, disbelief in her tone. "Are you two twins?"

Shion nodded. "Yup. But don't worry about a thing, Chie-sensei. I always wear my hair in a ponytail and Shion always wears hers down, so you can always tell us apart from each other. We also wear different uniforms, as you can see," she spoke, gesturing towards her sister.

Shion was currently wearing Mion's uniform back in the real world. It was a simple button-up white shirt with a yellow vest over it, one that could be buttoned up but never was. Along with this, a red tie hung down from her neck. A long pink skirt completed the outfit, one that reached down all the way to the bottom of her legs. Mion's outfit, on the other hand, was quite different. She had decided to use the same outfit that Shion did back in her world. It was another simple, white, button-up shirt with a small, blue tie on her neck, along with a very short skirt of the same blue as her tie. It wasn't something the tomboy would usually wear, but considering that she was supposed to act different than how she would back in her world and was thus not a tomboy, she had to wear it.

"All right." She turned towards Mion. "What's your name?"

"Sonozaki Shion," Mion said, careful not to slip up and use her sister's name instead.

Chie looked surprised. "Ah, you have similar names, too. Well, don't be too surprised if your classmates call you by the wrong name!" She smiled. "I think I'll call you Sonozaki-chan. I call your sister Sonozaki-san, so don't get confused." Chie stood up from her seat. "Anyways, I think it's about time for class to start. I'll introduce you to the class and then I'll have your sister teach you about how things work around here. I trust that she can do that."  
>Shion nodded. "You can count on me, Chie-sensei!"<p>

"Good! Let's get started, then…"

The twins followed their teacher down the hallway, and when they reached the door, Shion entered first and sat down in her seat. Chie turned to Mion, giving her a reassuring smile.

"I know it may be a little nerve-wracking for you, but don't worry. Everyone here is very friendly and I'm sure your sister will introduce you to all her friends. So just follow me, okay?" Chie said to her.

"Mhm," Mion responded. In truth, she was a little nervous, but not because it was her first day of school. She was just nervous about meeting all the people in her class and seeing how different they could be. Would they be that dramatically different? The only clear difference she could see so far was that she was Shion and Shion was her, but that might be the only difference. Were there any others…?

Chie smiled. "Okay. We're going in. Just remember what I said, and everything will be okay."

The teacher opened up the door to the classroom, and Mion followed her. When they reached the front, they turned around and looked at the students before them. Mion began scanning the front of the crowd of students, looking for people she knew. She instantly spotted the blue-haired Rika and the yellow-haired Satoko, who both looked very interested in the sudden appearance of Mion. She could see Satoko glance to the back, to where Mion was, looking a little puzzled, though Rika didn't do the same.

"Class, I'm sure you've heard about the new transfer student coming in." She turned towards Mion. "This is Sonozaki Shion, Sonozaki-san's sister. Sonozaki-chan, would you like to introduce yourself?"

Mion fidgeted a little as she looked at the class before her. What was she going to say? "Hi. I'm Sonozaki Shion, I'm Mion's sister, if you couldn't tell," she spoke. "I just moved here from Okinomiya, and I am hoping that I get along with you all!" she told them all.

Chie smiled at the girl. "Sonozaki-chan, why don't you take a seat next to your sister?" she said, gesturing to the free desk right next to Shion. "Sonozaki-san, please introduce your sister to your friends and the rest of the class. Everyone, please treat Sonozaki-chan well and as a good friend! That's all!"

Mion nodded. "Thanks," she said before wandering to the back.

The girl sat down at the desk next to her sister, feeling a little nervous about meeting all her friends for the first time in this world. Would they be different, or was the twin swap the only thing that was different about this world? She fidgeted in her seat a little, and a part of her didn't want to look around at the people around her. She was actually a little scared to do so and find out any major differences, if any.

"Gee, Mion!" snapped a male voice. "You told us your sister was transferring, but not your _identical twin_ sister! You should have informed us of that! I nearly had a heart attack!"

Shion shot him an innocent smile. "What was the point of adding the extra details? Besides, the look on your face was quite funny."

The boy grumbled something under his breath that Mion couldn't quite catch.

It was Keiichi, and just by that one moment, it seemed like he wasn't too much different. That combined with what she had read on the letters led her to believe that he was indeed no different from how he was back in her world. Of course, a little more interaction would help, but…

"Wow, I've never met identical twins before. That's actually kind of cool," said another voice, causing Mion to turn around and meet the eye of the person who had spoken those words. When Mion did so, however, her heart nearly stopped.

_Satoshi?_

It was indeed Houjou Satoshi, Satoko's older brother who had gone missing a year before. He shouldn't be here. _So in this world, Satoshi didn't go missing? Wow._ Things really were different in this world, weren't they? Just his presence led Mion to conclude that this world indeed did have many differences. _What an interesting world. But if Satoshi isn't gone… does that mean that he never killed his aunt?_

It was widely known that Satoshi had killed his aunt so that he could protect his sister, Satoko. Of course they always tried to hide that fact and never talk about it, pretending that it wasn't true, but it was glaringly obvious that he had been the one to kill his aunt. Who else would have done it? Besides, the murder had been done with a baseball bat, and everyone knew that Satoshi's favorite thing to do on his own time was to play baseball. This was a factor in his disappearance.

No one else but her and Shion knew, but Satoshi was currently being confined in a coma under the clinic. He had contracted a disease specific to Hinamizawa titled Hinamizawa Syndrome. When a person had Hinamizawa Syndrome, they would begin to hallucinate that everyone around them was trying to kill them and experience extreme paranoia. At the end of Hinamizawa Syndrome, when it got so bad, the person who had it would commit suicide by tearing his or her throat out. It was a dangerous disease, and there was no cure for it, so confining Satoshi was the only thing they could do.

But nothing like that in this world seemed to have happened, for Satoshi was here and well.

"Shion, was it?" spoke Satoshi gently. "That's a very nice name. I like it."

Had it been Satoshi saying that to the actual Shion, her heart would have probably exploded. She knew that her sister had a huge crush on Satoshi back in her own world. She had been very upset when he disappeared, to the point of blaming Mion and trying to strangle her to death. It was an act that was done without her thinking, however, and she instantly forgave her sister for doing such a thing. Neither of them ever talked about it again.

"Thanks. And you?" she spoke.

Satoshi looked startled. "Ah… oh… I forgot to tell you. I'm Houjou Satoshi. It's nice to meet you, Shion." He smiled gently at her, in a way that Satoshi would. He was a very gentle and somewhat of a shy guy, and the way he was acting certainly seemed to be the same as usual for him. _So, besides the fact that he's here, there's not much different about him, huh?_

"Well then!" Shion suddenly cried out. She was wearing small twinge of envy on her face, something that certainly didn't go unnoticed by Mion. "Let's introduce you to everyone else. Keiichi, you got anything to say to my sister?" she asked, patting the boy on the back.

Keiichi turned to Mion, a cheesy smile suddenly breaking out on his face. It was something that caused Mion's heart to jump, though she tried not to make it noticeable. "I'm Maebara Keiichi. It's a pleasure to meet you, Shion! I'm always up for new friends and you certainly seem like the type of friends I'd like to have." He reached out his hand for her to shake.

Mion hesitantly reached for his hand and shook it, blushing ever so slightly when she felt the warmth of his hand. "I-It's nice to meet you, too!" she cried out, trying desperately to hide her feelings. It would just seem downright odd to the others if she were to have such an expression on her face after a few minutes of knowing him.

Shion seemed to notice this, though, and just smirked.

"Though, I wish your sister would have told me you two were twins!" he cried, turning towards Shion with a somewhat angry look on his face. "I swear you were trying to give me a heart attack this early in the morning!"

Shion laughed. "The look on your face was so funny. I'm never going to forget it!" She gave him a wink, just to add to the effect.

Keiichi grumbled. "Anyways, I hope that you're a little different from your sister here!" he cried.

But the only response he got was another laugh from Shion. "That's where you're going to be disappointed! We twins are the most awesome and mischievous duo ever created!" She turned towards her sister, a smirk on her face. "The two of us are going to have so much fun pushing you around! Right, Shion?"

Deciding to go along with it, Mion nodded. "You bet!"

A look of alarm painted Keiichi's face.

"Ahaha, and you were getting so close to my sister, Keiichi. Were you hoping that she would be different from me?" she said, smirking. "Or was it something different? Ehehe…I think I know."

Keiichi blinked in confusion.

"It's love at first sight, isn't it?" she suggested, one of her signature smirks on her face that she would wear whenever she was teasing her sister.

"WHAT? !" Mion and Keiichi cried out in unison.

"Onee!" protested Mion. "Don't say such things!"

"Yeah, Mion, we just met!"

Shion laughed again. "But that's why they call it love at first sight, right? Because you fell in love with her the moment you laid your male eyes on her. That's why you looked so shocked. It's not because of us being identical twins; it was because of how beautiful she was. And then when she spoke in that soft, angelic voice… you must have fallen on the spot! I can't blame you. If I were I guy, I think I would have married her a long time ago!" she joked.

Mion knew everything she was saying was a joke and that it was supposed to get the couple embarrassed and hopefully provide a bit of chemistry, but really, it was just embarrassing.

"Mion! You just made that all up on the spot, didn't you? !" he cried out. "It's nothing like that!"

"Yeah, Onee!" protested Mion.

Shion let out a large sigh as she looked at the two blushing teenagers, and then shrugged. "Ah, I guess it's enough for one day, anyways." She leaned back in her seat and kicked her feet up on the desk, then crossing her arms behind her head and relaxing. "Man, though. I have never seen you look so surprised, Keiichi. Maybe I should have said something. I wouldn't want anyone blaming me on your death if you really did have a heart attack!"

"I was surprised, too," commented Satoshi's soft tone. "At first I thought Mion had just changed clothing, but then I realized she was right near me…" He smiled again. "I think it should be interesting. Shion, I hope we can be good friends."

Mion grinned. "Me too!"

Once again, Shion looked a little jealous. It quickly became apparent to Mion that Shion had feelings for Satoshi in this world, too. That was probably why she had quickly began talking about the relationship that she had with Keiichi, to distract the friendly scene that she thought could be the beginning of some kind of love, be it on Mion's side or Satoshi's.

Though before Shion could distract the conversation again, Mion felt someone tug at her shirt. Whipping around, she caught sight of two, big, round purple eyes blinking at her.

"Mii… Hi, Shi. I wasn't told you moved…" spoke Rika in a soft, cutesy voice.

Mion instantly assumed that Rika did know who she was by this sentence and smiled. "Ah, Rika-chan, it's been a while since I've seen you. Are you doing well?" she asked the young girl.

Rika smiled cutely. "Mii, I'm doing very well! I'm very happy to see Shi here with Mi, too. Did Shi's family decide to be nice to Shi?" she asked.

"Yeah, the family decided it was time for me to move into the main house with Onee. It took a little while to convince Onibaba to let me stay, but in the end, it all worked out. And now, here I am!" she spoke to the young girl cheerfully.

This caused the little blue-haired girl to smile. "We can have more friends now~. I'm glad that Shi's family is being nice to her now. Mi told me that she was sad that you weren't here with her, and I was sad, too. I only got to see a little of you but I really liked playing with you." Another cute grin broke out on her face. "And now that Shi is here, she can play all the time! Nipah~!"

Mion giggled at the use of the 'Nipah.' It was one of Rika's verbal tics that she used whenever she found it appropriate to, and seeing it here in this world led Mion to believe that she wasn't any different than how she was back at her own world. But was it true that the only differences were that she was Shion, Mion was her, and that Satoshi was here? No, for some reason, she was quite sure that that wasn't the case. There were just two major differences, then. It seemed odd to her that that would be the case. There just had to be more than that!

"Yeah, so we can all play together now," Shion said to Rika. "Now there will be one more person to play with when we play tag or hide and go seek outside. It'll be a lot of fun. I've been trying to let Shion come in for a while but my family hasn't wanted her to."

Keiichi raised an eyebrow. "Huh, why's that?" he asked.

Shion shot him a silencing look. Keiichi asked no further questions about the matter.

"Well, I'm glad." Rika suddenly turned around, looking back at her desk with incomplete homework on it. "Mii, well, I have to finish my homework or Chie will scold me and I will surely get in trouble! We will all eat together at lunch. Nipah~!"

And with that, Rika walked away.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Following the little chat at the beginning of the day, the group of friends found themselves gathered once again at lunch. Chie explained that she usually didn't allow people to talk in class, but she made an exception because Mion was new and she wanted people to get to know her. Mion knew that wasn't going to last for long, though. They often had conversations in the middle of class back at her world, and she was sure it would apply to this world, too.

The five friends pushed their desks together and began to have lunch. Shion had thankfully made lunch for both her and Mion, much to the younger twin's relief. She still didn't know if she could cook in this world and didn't want to take any risks.

"So, Shion, are you really that much like your sister or is Mion just exaggerating?" Keiichi asked out of the blue.

Mion shrugged. "Not sure. I can't really see differences and similarities in our personalities. That's for you to judge!" she said.

Shion smiled. "Well, we are very alike and we do spend a lot of time together making mischief, but I suppose you can see differences in our personalities."

"You can see it in how they dress. You see how Mion has a long skirt and Shion has a short one?" Satoshi pointed out. "Just that and you can tell. If they were the same, I would think they would wear the same clothing."

The twins exchanged glances. "Eh, not so sure about that. Our family always dressed us up differently so that people could tell the difference between us," Shion explained. "It kind of caught on. To be honest, I think it would be more fitting for me to wear Shion's outfit…"

_Exactly_, Mion thought. This short skirt did _not_ fit her but she had to go with the rules of this world. Though she had to admit, had she been brought up wearing these kinds of clothing, she probably would be spending her teenage years wearing dresses and short skirts. That was probably why Shion was wearing such a tomboyish outfit right now, when she was by almost no means a tomboy.

"Well I'm glad you do," commented Keiichi. "There would just be too much confusion if you wore the same outfit!"

Mion laughed. "Well thanks for the idea, Kei-chan! I'll try it sometime!" she joked.

"H-Hey!" cried Keiichi. "What's up with that? And why did you just call me 'Kei-chan?'"

_Oops! _Mion quickly remembered that that wasn't how she referred to Keiichi in this world. She had just been so used to it that she had let it slip right from her mouth. Going along with it, she smiled. "Well, Kei-chan, I decided that I would call you Kei-chan from now on, because that fits you more than boring old Keiichi. Do you like it?" she asked.

Shion suddenly grinned. "Hey, good idea! I'm going to call him Kei-chan from now on, too!"

Keiichi looked startled. "H-Huh? I mean… if you want to call me that…"

Rika interrupted the conversation. "Mii, Mi and Shi used to dress up the same way all the time to confuse me. I didn't know there were two of them for a long time."

Keiichi glanced to Rika. "You knew Shion?"

Rika nodded. "Shi was a good friend of mine but I didn't get to talk to her much. I'm glad to see her here! Nipah!"

Shion suddenly turned to Satoshi, who was looking behind uneasily. There was a worried expression on his face as he strained his neck to see what was behind him.

"Huh? Satoshi-kun?" Shion said.

"Hold on," he said quickly before standing up. "I'll be back."

The blonde-haired boy wandered off, and when he was gone, no one said anything for a while. Mion wondered why he had gotten up so suddenly, but when she took a good look at where he was going, it became clear. The boy was currently standing in front of Satoko, who was eating all alone. He was saying a few things to her, but Mion couldn't quite make out what they were.

Rika poked her rice with chopsticks. "Mii, I wish Satoko would come over here and have fun."

Shion looked towards Rika. "You know how she is…"

"Yeah, but I still want to play with Satoko," she said.

Mion became quite confused by the conversation at hand. Come to think of it, why wasn't Satoko with them eating lunch in the first place? And why didn't she come up to greet her? And now, there was this conversation at hand… It was all very odd. She looked over to the two siblings. Satoshi was calming speaking to her, but Satoko had her arms crossed over her chest and a very stubborn look on her face.

Shion suddenly leaned over and placed a hand to Mion's ear, which was something that surprised her for a brief moment. "That's Satoshi-kun's little sister, Satoko. She… doesn't like having friends. We keep trying to convince her to become friends with us, but…" She sighed. "She's just too stubborn. Satoshi-kun is trying to convince her right now, actually. And judging by how it looks…. Well, you can see for yourself."  
>Was that really the type of person Satoko was in this world? Was she really the type to hate having friends and to exclude herself from everyone else, even when people insisted on being her friend? That didn't sound at all like the happy, mischievous Satoko that she knew. That was another difference. For some reason, Satoko had a completely different personality, Shion was her and she was Shion, and Satoshi was still there. Rika still seemed to be the same… but… there seemed to be something a little off about her. Just a little.<p>

And where in the world was Rena?

She at first assumed that Rena just hadn't had time to greet her for one reason or another, and then when lunch came she assumed that she may be sick, but… was that really the case? They hadn't mentioned having any other friends, though maybe the topic just hadn't come up yet.

"So, is this everyone our age?" Mion asked casually as she played with her food.

"Yeah. It's just you, Satoshi-kun, Kei-chan, and me here. I know it's a little odd, but that's just how it is. Everyone else is around Rika-chan's age," Shion explained.

Okay, so that definitely was odd. Was Rena just _not_ there? And why wouldn't she be there? She knew that her friend got a little… odd, when they brought up the topic of her moving back to Hinamizawa. She would always explain that she saw the local shrine god, Oyashiro-sama, come up to her and say that he was going to curse her if she didn't move back, which is why she did. There was this local curse in Hinamizawa that went by Oyashiro-sama's curse, which said that one person would die and one would disappear at the local festival each year. This was something Rena was very serious about because she believed that she had been cursed but avoided it when she moved back. Did that just not happen? But knowing Rena, she would certainly want to be in Hinamizawa after all that happened. But maybe that didn't happen, either. Confusion filled Mion's brain as she thought harder about it. Perhaps the fact that Rena wasn't here related to why Satoshi wasn't? No… that couldn't be. There was a brief period of time where Satoshi and Rena knew each other. Then why?

What kind of circumstance was this world under?  
>She held her head.<p>

It was all a mystery.

"Something wrong, Shion?" Shion asked. "You're acting funny."  
>Mion quickly brushed it off. "Ah, nothing! I just remembered something odd." She turned towards her bento box and pulled out a piece of meat, which she then preceded to stuff in her mouth. "Oh, Onee! You're a really good cook. I had forgotten while I was at the apartment," she commented after swallowing, trying to distract herself from the topic.<p>

Shion smiled. "Well thank you! I miss your cooking, Onee. Perhaps I can try it sometime?"

_Ah, that proves it! I can cook in this world, can't I? Well then, that's good. I won't have to worry about that anymore. _"Yeah, I'll let you try some of my food sometime, Onee! I'll just have to figure out what to cook."  
>Rika smiled. "Mii, everyone here is a good cook. Except Keiichi. He's a bad cook!"<p>

Keiichi looked startled by this sudden statement. "H-Hey! I just never got the chance to learn how to cook! That's all! I'm sure that if I learned how to cook, I would be better than all of you!"

Mion laughed. "That's a daring statement, Kei-chan. Better not make statements you can't prove, otherwise you may be forced to!" she said.

"Tch, you're just like your sister, aren't you?" Keiichi said as she looked to Mion.

Mion shrugged. "Not really. We're different. You just haven't gotten to know me yet."

Shion suddenly smirked and shifted towards her sister. "Oh, do you want to get to know him?"

Mion shot her a silencing glare.

Shion laughed. "Well, at least you're getting along fine here! I'm glad. Tomorrow, we have gym class. I think that would be a good time for us to play some games and get to know each other a little better. I think that with a little time, you'll fit right in! In fact, you already are. It feels like you were always here, you know?" She looked up at the ceiling, relaxing in her chair.

"It's like a missing piece of the puzzle or something like that," Keiichi commented.

"Leave it to you to come up with some sort of metaphor," sighed Shion.

"But I'm serious!" he cried. "I feel like Shion already fits right in. I'm glad, too. I can't wait to get to know her more, and find out if she really is like you…"

Mion smiled. "Thanks, guys. It really does feel that way."

But that was probably because she was already friends with them, Mion noted. She certainly felt that she was already a part of the group and that she knew them all, except for Satoko and that little part of Rika that seemed different for some reason. Keiichi wasn't different, Shion wasn't much different despite baring a completely different name, and Satoshi was the same as he was when he was still in the group, with the only odd thing about him here being the fact that he was here in the first place.

There were so many differences, and yet so little. But Mion wanted to get to the bottom of this. She needed to know why these changes were here. Were they just random changes, or were they following some sort of pattern? And if so, why wasn't Keiichi changed? Was it because the pattern didn't apply to him? And then there was the whole matter of how she got here in the first place, and how she would get back to her own world… Mion sighed. This wasn't making sense and it was hurting her head. There just weren't any answers.

Would she ever be able to escape this world, and would she ever be able to find out the truth?  
>She didn't know.<p>

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**I was kind of hoping this chapter would be a little longer but it fit to end right there. This chapter was mainly about getting to know the characters in this series, and I'm sure that you've noticed their differences and similarities. That being said, I know you know what circumstances this world is under but if I didn't tell you, you would probably being having a hard time like Mion. It's just very complicated and hard for her to figure out considering all that's happening around her.**

…**Mirai Nikki 15, why are you taking such a long time to sub? D:.**

**Sorry. Anyways, I hope you're enjoying this so far. I'm not sure how long it's going to be, and there's no judging from here. When I have a better idea, I will let you know. I am almost certain, though, that it will be shorter than GED and BFB. Of course, I did say the same thing about BFB. What a monster of a story that turned out to be. I'm hoping the same won't happen for WAN. I kind of want a small breather for EOG, which as I have explained will be very long. I hope that you're all looking forward to that. Yet, I also feel like there's a lot of pressure. I know a lot of you liked GED and I hope that the rewrite will be better than the original and satisfy you guys. …That's going to be a while from now, though. WAN… I'm trying to do my best with this. I have decided to let the chapters flow and not push myself to write more, as evident by the top of my Crimso's Corner V.3 this chapter. We'll see how this goes.**

**I would say something about school but that is the last thing I want to think about right now. Oh wait, I just did. Let me think about something else. Uh… when's Mirai Nikki going to be subbed?**

**~Crimso**


	6. Chapter 5: Settling In

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Sigh. I hate it when you need to talk to your History teacher about your project and he's not there. He has a meeting or something or another so he can't be here. So yeah, I emailed him and there's nothing I can do but wait. I'm going to write this chapter here for now. I never write these when I'm supposed to be doing work, by the way. It's always when I have no work. …I'm not a (really) bad student! Serious!**

**Note One: I think there isn't going to be as much skipping now.**

**Note Two: Can I ask you all to watch out for times where Shion calls Mion Onee and where Mion calls Shion Shion? I proofread and look for that kind of stuff but it does pass by my watchful eye sometimes. Thank you!**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Five: Settling In_

"Wow, Shion. You really fit right in!" commented Shion as she lay on her futon, her abandoned math homework sitting at the side of her head. "I'm so glad about that, Shion! Really, it's going to be a ton of fun!"

It was later that night, and Mion and Shion found themselves in their room. They had been doing homework, but the two of them had never been known for their ability to do homework. Well… if they were, it would be in a negative way. The two of them never cared about doing their homework, even in the real world. Mion was glad to know that she had practically failed out of the boarding school she went to before in this world. That meant that she could act lazy about her work, as always. The two of them were now just conversing about what had happened that day, and how well Mion had gotten along.

"Haha, yeah. I'm glad that there are so many nice people at that school. I think I'll be able to have a fun time," mused Mion as she relaxed on the fluffiness of her own futon. It felt like it had been forever since she had lay on a futon. She had been spending the last few days in the apartment, after all, and that was where there was a bed and not a futon. She didn't find a futon more comfortable than a bed, and beds weren't more comfortable than futons, but it did feel good to be back on one. It felt more like she was at home.

Well, technically, this _was_ her home, but she didn't feel like it was so. She still felt a connection with the real her, the her that was actually Mion and knew all of her friends already. _But I have to remind myself that I'm here to blend in for now. I'll figure out how to get back as soon as I blend in._

"Seriously. I talked to Kei-chan and he seemed happy that he had a new friend. The same went for Rika-chan and Satoshi-kun." She smiled at the thought. "The five of us are going to be amazing friends. I'm excited, Shion!" She sat up and looked over to her sister, a huge smile on her face.

_Five._ That word hit Mion hard. Yes, there were only five of them in this world, rather than the usual six. They were down one member. Well, actually, they were down two if you counted who had been in the club in her world, for Satoshi wasn't a member back there and was in fact missing. Satoko and Rena were the ones that were missing from this group. Satoko was most certainly there, she just didn't want friends and seemed a little rude to Mion. Rena, on the other hand… no one seemed to know her judging by the fact that they said that she, Shion, Keiichi, and Satoshi were the only teenagers. But where was she, then? It was very confusing, and the only thing she could think of was that she was back in Ibaraki, where she had lived before she moved to Hinamizawa. That meant the events that caused that to happen never did. But why? Why didn't they happen?

She gritted her teeth.

"Oh yeah. I can't wait to get to know everyone else better! Rika-chan, Satoshi-kun, and Kei-chan… they all look like really nice people," she commented as she stared up at the ceiling.

When she turned to look at her sister, however, she noticed a perverted grin spread out across her face, and she instantly knew what was coming next.

"Oh, Kei-chan, you say? Have you fallen for him already?" she teased. "Ahaha, that's my Shion! Already in love after a day of knowing the boy. I shouldn't be surprised!" She let out a large laugh to add to the effect, and Mion was pretty sure it sounded like one of those mocking laughs, yet rather teasing.

Mion decided that she would not let Shion do that to her. If she continued to make jokes about this, she would just get even more flustered. Yes, she already liked Keiichi, but that was because she actually had already known him for a long time! "Oh yeah, well what about you, Onee?" she asked her, narrowing her eyes challengingly as she spoke those words. There was a pause from Shion, whose eyes instantly widened. "I know that you have a crush on Satoshi-kun," she mocked her.

Shion looked very surprised. There seemed to be some fear mixed in with that surprise, too, for she cried out. "W-What! Please don't tell me it's that obvious!"

Mion laughed out loud. She had got her right where she wanted to. "I saw a little blush on your face when you looked at him, and not only that, but you kept staring when he wasn't looking! And then there was that time where Satoshi-kun greeted me and you seemed _so_ eager to pull him away from me and get the attention on _you_ instead…" she rambled on, smirking. She would not lose this one. "Haha, Onee. You can't hide everything from your little sister! Now I'm going to tell everyone about it!"

"No!" cried the older twin. "You can't! You can't say a word!"

Mion laughed mockingly, mimicking how Shion had laughed before. "Oh yeah, well I'm going to tell everyone!"

"That's not fair!" protested Shion. "Don't tell!"

Mion just laughed again.

It was indeed pretty obvious that she had a crush on Satoshi, though Mion noted that might have been because she was looking out for it because of how she acted towards him in the other world, where she had come from. Shion really did love Satoshi, and she was not surprised that it also applied to this Shion. It was really the only topic she would get embarrassed about. She was usually cool and didn't get flustered when it came to boys, but when Satoshi came up; it was a whole different matter.

After that, Shion kept mostly quiet about Keiichi. The two of them went off deep in their thoughts, though Mion noticed a visible blush on Shion's face and concluded that she was thinking about Satoshi. Mion took the time to envision the boy that she liked in her own head, thinking hard about how he had acted today. He really wasn't any different from how he acted back at her own world, now was he? She was glad about that. She didn't know how he would act if he had been any different. In fact, the girl couldn't even picture a different version of her Keiichi. Really, what else would he be like? Rude? No, she couldn't picture a mean Keiichi. Quiet? No, that didn't work either. He definitely wasn't the shy type.

Really, this Keiichi was the only right one.

She flustered. She was very glad to have the normal Keiichi by her side. She wouldn't know what to do had he been any different in this world. Maybe she wouldn't even like him, and not even in just a love way. It would be hard to get along and blend into the world. It was even a little tough to do so without Rena and Satoko, so what would it be like without him, or with him being a jerk? She didn't know. There was no point dwelling on it, though. That wasn't how things were and for that, she was thankful, but there was nothing more on the matter.

Really, though, it was nice. At least she had someone that was the same, so she could have someone to be close to. And then there was always the chance that if she couldn't go back, she would still have the old Keiichi…

Mion paused right there. She didn't want to think about that possibility. It was possible to go back, she told herself. She just didn't know how to do so right now. She would find out eventually, and that was something that she was sure of.

"Hey, Shion. I want to discuss something with you," Shion suddenly spoke, distancing Mion from her thoughts and cutting them off entirely.

Mion was very curious about what it could be. She even sat up on her futon and looked at her sister straight in the eye. For some reason, she seemed to be looking rather serious and grim, and her tone only enforced that image of her. Shion herself sat up on her futon and looked back into her sister's eyes, retaining that serious look on her face.

"Huh, what is it, Onee?" Mion asked her older sister, at this point being unable to hide the curiosity in her tone.

"I know they don't want you to involve yourself with the affairs of the family, but as twins, it's only right for me to tell you what's going on right now. I don't want you to be cut off completely from the family," Shion said.

This certainly sparked Mion's interest. While she was planning on completely staying out of the affairs of the Sonozaki family, she realized it would be very good for her to know what was going on behind her family. She would be able to get a better grasp at what was going on her, her current position and what people thought of her, and of course find out any information that was running around Hinamizawa that she would probably want to know. She was glad that Shion was deciding to do this, though she couldn't help but wonder what would happen if she was found out about.

"Ah, thanks, Onee. Are you sure you won't get in trouble if you share that kind of information with me?" she asked.

Shion shook her head. "I will probably get in trouble, but no one is going to find out. Just don't say anything around Batcha, okay?"

Mion nodded.

"Well, I'm sure you know about the whole incident with Uncle Kurou, right?" she began to speak. It was only about half a second after those words had come out of her mouth that she seemed to realize something. "Oh wait, no you don't. I don't think anyone ever told you…"

_Uncle Kurou?_ He was one of the many uncles that Mion had. Well, he was technically her great uncle but no one really referred to him as such. Mion knew him as being a very grumpy man. He was quite old right now, though not comparable to her grandmother just yet. In truth, she had never liked him. He was grouchy and rude, and he always criticized Oryou's choices. He was also very strict about tradition, and as such, he was not happy when she decided to let the twins live. Mion and Shion tried to stay as far away from him as they possibly could.

"Well, you never found out and I'm sure that you will, so I might as well tell you." She paused for a moment to let out quite a large sigh, and a troubled expression painted her face. "He was murdered."  
>A look of surprise washed over Mion's face. This was the first time she heard of something ill happening here in this world. <em>Murder?<em>

"Yeah, I know. The Sonozaki family is currently trying to hunt down who did it. He was killed with a butcher knife and that's really all we know. The knife was no longer there and so the detective couldn't have gotten fingerprints or anything like that." She turned to her sister, noticing the look of shock on her face. "I know, it's surprising, and I guess especially since we never told you…"

Mion didn't know what to say.

"You don't have to feel bad. I know how he treated you. I didn't like him, either…" Shion said, turning to look off with a distant look glimmering in her green eyes.

Well, yeah. Mion found that she didn't particularly feel bad for him in the slightest, and she was sure that a lot of other people felt the same, and not just her and Shion. Even in her world, he hated a lot of people, especially Shion. He used every possible opportunity he could find to throw Shion out of the way of everyone and himself, and he often tried to pretend she didn't even exist and convinced others of this. Mion hated him for that. Oryou also didn't like him because he was constantly going on and on about how things would be if he ran the family and how she was doing things wrong, which was not something to say to the great head of the Sonozaki family. Judging by that, Mion wouldn't be surprised if she didn't feel bad in the slightest.

"Batcha doesn't really feel bad, either," said Shion, confirming Mion's suspicions at once, "so don't worry. She needs to investigate it, though, because she is slightly afraid that whoever the murderer is is seeking to kill all of the Sonozakis, and that he may target her next."

Mion hoped that that wasn't the case for her grandmother's sake. Even though she knew that she would return to her own world at some point, she wanted to make sure that everything in this world was happy and joyous. She didn't want to leave behind a world that was in tatters. If that was the case, then it may not even just be her grandmother the murderer would target. They may go after her other uncles, too, and then her parents and Shion… and maybe even herself. She gulped at the idea, hoping that she wouldn't die or anything like that. Was this world really dangerous?

"The process of looking for the murderer is going slowly. We can't find many clues or information, unfortunately." She sighed. "Well, I'll let you know if anything else comes up."

Mion nodded. "Thanks, Onee."

Shion turned around and shot her sister a smile, changing the solemn and dark atmosphere in a blink of the eye. "No problem. I'm always here to help out my sister." She gave her a quick thumbs-up and a grin. "I won't let you down!"

Mion couldn't help but laugh a little. "Aw, thanks, Onee! Again! Really, it's good to know about this kind of thing."

"Yeah, I though I wonder how long it would take for Batcha to break it to you. You can't hide something like murder forever," she said, temporarily switching back to that dark tone. "But it's all good!"

The younger twin grinned right back. "I mean really, Shion, thanks for everything."

The atmosphere died once again, and Shion looked a little troubled, to say the very least. "But you know, I feel like I haven't been doing things right as an older sister," she admitted, looking off into the distance as she spoke those words. "I didn't come to see you when you were in a state of depression, I didn't even try to sneak over there, I didn't pressure Batcha enough to let you move in as evident by the fact that you _have_ moved in…" She looked down at the sheets of her futon. "I feel like it's all my fault."

All those words Mion felt like she could relate to. She felt the same way when she was back in her world, even if Shion wasn't in a state of depression. She was perfectly fine on her own, even if she felt pressured by her family and hurt by the things they said about her. She too had believed it all to be her fault that her family had hated Shion, seeing as it should have been her. The truth was it probably was her fault. She had stolen the tattoo, the mark of the Sonozaki head's heritage, from her by pure accident. She didn't know the day they swapped was to be the day "Mion" was to receive the tattoo.

Now, the Shion here was feeling the same guilt for a different reason. She obviously hadn't stolen the tattoo or anything like that, but she felt as if she had failed to save her sister when she was in a state of despair. Mion had never had to save her sister from such a thing, but still felt regret at how she felt deep on the inside. She could completely relate to the numerous things that Shion was now saying.

"Onee," she told her sister gently. "It's not your fault, and you know that…"

"But it is!" she cried out in protest as she whipped around to face her sister, tears in her eyes. "It's all my fault! I could have snuck out to meet with you at the apartment and heal you, but I never did! I never considered it! I never even tried hard enough to get Batcha to let you move in! If it was as easy as you made it when we went to see her before, then you could have moved in years before! Don't you get what I'm saying, Shion? This is all my fault!"

There were now tears that were streaking down Shion's face, and Mion felt a pang of guilt swell up inside of her. She hated seeing her sister cry when it came to her. It just made her feel guiltier.

Mion pushed herself over to her sister, taking a place right next to her on her futon. "Onee—… Mion, it's not your fault. You wrote me all those letters, remember?" she said, trying to cheer her sister up.

"Even so, they didn't help! I could have been more helpful!" cried Shion as she buried her head into her blue jeans, wrapping her arms around them. "And I didn't do anything!"

"But you remember how I broke free of my depressed state by reading them, Mion?" Mion pointed out, though knowing that that wasn't the truth and that she wasn't even depressed to begin with. "You helped a whole bunch. If it weren't for you, I'd still be locked in my room crying all day! Really, Mion. You did all you could and for that, I'm thankful. Now everything is okay and you don't need to worry. I'm here now, I'm no longer depressed, and I'm not completely locked out of the family. So cheer up!"

Her sister looked up at her with red, puffy eyes.

Mion inched closer to her sister and wrapped her arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug. "Don't worry about a thing. I'm fine now, Mion," she whispered gently to her sister, hugging her even tighter. "No more crying or anything of that sort!"

Her sister turned around in the embrace and hugged her right back, clinging onto her as if her life depended on it. She burred her head into her young sister's shoulder and continued to cry out the last of her thoughts and feelings while Mion stroked the back of her head, reassuring her that it wasn't her fault. As she held her sister tighter, she thought about her own feelings back in her own world. Back in her own world, it would be Shion who would comfort her, right? For some reason, it felt strange to be the one reassuring her sister that nothing was her fault. They had had a moment like this in the past, and it had indeed been Shion who comforted her. Right now, she truly felt as if she were taking on the role of an older sister, which she had never truly been able to do, not even in her own world. _And now, when I'm actually the younger one, I act older. How ironic… _she thought rather bitterly, though she quickly pushed it out of her head.

The two sisters stayed in the embrace for a long time, enjoying the warmth that they got from each other. It felt nice to be near her sister and to comfort her, allowing her to wash away the last of her regrets. She too felt comfort from her sister, though she was sure that her sister was receiving much more because of the state that she was in. She had been in that position many times and knew how comforting it was to be near her sister when she was upset. It changed everything.

When Shion had stopped crying, she pulled away from Mion and looked at her straight in the eye. She was still sniffling, Mion noted, though not all that much.

"Mion?" Mion said.

"Shion?" Shion said.

Mion smiled. "No more regrets, all right?"

Shion nodded, quickly returning the smile. "Right. No more regrets."

_~~~~X~~~~_

The next day at school was like any normal day, for the most part. The children around her had taken it upon themselves to teach her everything about how the school worked, even though Mion already technically knew how everything worked around the school. They were explaining things like how classes went on and such, and how the teacher divided her attention on students and such.

"And whatever you do," a random kid Mion couldn't quite place a name on spoke, "don't insult curry!"

"Yeah, Chie-sensei will eat your head, just as if it is curry!" exclaimed Rika loudly.

Mion laughed. "Well, I'll be careful then," she said. She already knew well about her teacher's love for curry. She ate curry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, and her whole office smelled like curry! Her books were all about curry, and most of her free time was spent researching the history of curry or making some more. If she heard someone say something bad about curry, even if it was the tiniest insult, she would go into full berserk mode.

"I'm sure Shion noticed when she went into Chie-sensei's office," Shion commented as she leaned back in her chair. "The whole thing smells like curry!"

"I certainly did. But really, who can eat so much curry?" Mion wondered out loud. Really, if she had to eat it every day for every single meal, she was sure that she would get sick of it very quickly. She wondered how Chie could eat it every day without getting bored of it. Then again, it was Chie that they were talking about here. There were some rumors that she couldn't get a boyfriend because she had not yet met a guy who wanted to eat curry every single day for every single meal, but no one was ever able to confirm whether or not that was true, though Mion felt it was quite silly.

Shion laughed. "Well, that's Chie-sensei for you. Her whole life is basically curry."

"Which goes to show you why you shouldn't insult it!" one of the younger boys said very strictly. "It is very important that you don't do it!" This boy seemed to be very happy to have someone new, Mion noted, and he was treated her quite like a youngster when she was probably twice his age. "It didn't end well for Maebara-san!"

All eyes focused on Keiichi, and he instantly put a hand to his head and began rubbing the back of it nervously, ruffling up his brown hair. "Well, I—"

"What did she do to you?" Mion asked.

He winced. "How about if we just say that it was a scary experience and move on?" he requested. "…I think I can feel myself shaking just thinking about it."

Mion couldn't help but laugh. Keiichi was always prone to those kinds of things, much to his despair. She could recall it happening once back in her world, where upon mentioning that curry was junk, he practically got screamed at by an enraged Chie. Mion was always careful not to insult curry so she hadn't been on the receiving end of the yelling, but she could tell that it was very scary.

Shion got up from her seat. "You poor boy," she said to Keiichi before she wandered out of the classroom, probably to use the bathroom or something similar.

"I'm serious!" he yelled out to her. "It was scary! Not that you would ever know!"

Shion was already gone, though, so his yelling was unnoticed. With a grumble, Keiichi slumped down in his seat and began to drum his fingers in an unknown rhythm down on the desk.

"That sister of yours. Sometimes, I swear, she can be a little odd."

Mion grinned. "Yeah, Onee is a little troublesome, but she's the best sister I could ever ask for. I wouldn't trade her for anyone," she commented as she thought about what had happened the night before. Really, she was lucky to have a sister like Shion, who would always comfort her in any way she could, and Shion was lucky to have Mion who would do the same whenever she needed it.

"You two really get along, don't you? I sometimes wish I had a sibling or something or another," Keiichi commented as he looked off at some kids playing further in the classroom. "It would be fun. Especially having an identical twin."

Mion giggled. "Yeah, well, of course it's fun having an identical twin. Onee and I have a blast. When we were younger, we would spend a good amount of time swapping places with each other and seeing if anyone ever noticed." She turned towards Keiichi, a mischievous and somewhat mocking grin on her face. "They never did."

"Well yeah! You two are identical twins." He paused for a moment, leaning back in his seat with his arms positioned behind his head. Suddenly, after a good amount of time spent saying nothing, a large grin broke out across his entire face. "Heh, I want an identical twin brother. It would be so much fun pulling those kinds of tricks on people! I could get away with anything and they would never know it was me and not my twin brother!"

Mion laughed. "Well, we never tried blaming each other or anything like that, but that's a good idea! Maybe I'll use it some day. Ehehe…" she joked.

"Tch! You're really just like your sister!" Keiichi commented as he turned towards the girl.

"Is that a bad thing?" Mion asked, slightly worried by the tone that the boy was using.

Keiichi shook his head. "Nah. Mion is a great friend no matter how she acts, so it's great having another one of her here even though she is quite a bit of a troublemaker at times." He closed his eyes and relaxed in his chair. From the position he was in and the look on his face, you would probably think that he was vacationing on the beach on a warm, sunny summer day. "She's really nice most of the time, though. She gets into this teasing mood every once in a while, though, like yesterday when she was suggesting that the two of us… were… ah." He couldn't complete the thought; it seemed to her that he was a little embarrassed. Mion knew that he was referring to the whole incident where she tried to push them together seconds after meeting each other, so there was no need for it to be said out loud. "Well, you know what I mean. She tends to do that a lot."

"That's my sister for you!" cried Mion. "Always teasing everyone every chance she gets. And that's not just you; I get it pretty bad too! I'm her twin sister, after all!"

Keiichi laughed loudly in response to such a statement. "I can imagine! She sees you every day and she's known you for forever, so I could see why."

Mion didn't mention the fact that they supposedly hadn't seen each other in a year. It would probably be better not to bring up such matters with her friends. "Well, yeah. She knows me like the back of her own hand so she can find any aspect of me to exploit in any way she can. And trust me, she does _not_ give up an opportunity!"

"But then couldn't you do the same right back to her? Can't you tease her about things? You know her like the back of your hand too, I'm sure," he pointed out quite casually. "You know, give her a taste of her own medicine."

"I do sometimes," she thought, thinking back to how she had teased Shion about her quite obvious crush on Satoshi the night before. "But I'm not enough like Shion to go ahead and tease everyone! I do it when I can!" she cried out.

Keiichi laughed loudly. "Is that so?" he said.

She nodded her head quickly. "It is so! You see, we twins may look similar but we have our very many differences. For example, she teases people way more than I do. I've already mentioned, that though. We also have a whole bunch of different hobbies. You know how Onee is. I used to be into drawing, but I kind of stopped recently and decided to move onto something new." There was a shining glint of confidence in her eyes as she looked up at the ceiling. "I'm an expert at card games!" she declared loudly, passion in her voice as she spoke about her number one favorite hobby. "I can beat everyone and anyone at card games! Any card game!"

Card games and just games in general were something that Mion enjoyed a lot, to the point where the club she had in the other world was based around just playing a bunch of games that she kept stuffed in her tiny locker, which many people were sure was bigger on the inside due to how much it seemed to hold. She was known as the strongest member of the club, almost never losing. It was probably the one thing she was most passionate about, and her talent in them was certainly something she was very proud about.

Keiichi seemed to be interested in the topic, as he raised an eyebrow and wore a look of excitement on his face. "Is that so, then? Are you really the best at card games?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed loudly. "No one can ever beat me at card games! I've defeated many people so many countless times that you would never believe it!" Of course, that didn't apply to this world, but how would he ever find out about that?

He grinned. "Well then, I'll have you know I'm great at games myself! Heh, I might as well be the expert at all games! I doubt you're better than me, Sonozaki Shion!"

"You really think that?" Mion said in a challenging manor.

Keiichi nodded firmly. "Mhm! You would be shocked when you saw how well I played, and the moment I beat you would be the moment I stole your pride away!"

Mion crossed her arms under her chest and gave him a challenging look. "Oh? Well then, how about if I bring in my cards tomorrow and we have a match after school? Then we can determine who is truly the best at card games," she said, a smirk stretching across her face as she spoke those words of challenge.

"Heh, you're on!" cried Keiichi.

Mion laughed. It would be great fun playing with him again. Really, this guy was no different, and she was sure that the results would be no different from usual. She would completely sweep him in the match and he would end up failing miserably, much to his annoyance and probably surprise in this world because of the fact that he had not yet seen how good she was at card games. She doubted that his skills were any different in this world, so it would probably once again prove to be an easy victory.

At that moment, Shion wandered over to them, wearing a curious look on her face. "Ah, Shion? I never knew you were so passionate about card games. This is the first time I've heard about this…"  
><em>Oh crap!<em> Mion realized very quickly that she needed to be a little more careful. She was acting too much like Mion and not enough like the Shion that she was in this world. "Well, you see, I had this deck of cards I played with whenever I was bored back at the apartment. You know, just to cheer myself up a little…" she spoke, hoping the random excuse made some sort of sense to her older sister.

But Shion didn't seem to notice how frantic she was and just grinned. "Ah, I didn't know that. Well then, Kei-chan, judging by what my sister said, you're about to get destroyed!"

Keiichi didn't look convinced, however. "Well, you'll see. Both of you will see! I'm great at games!"

Mion grinned. "Well, we'll see about that!" she cried out, before realizing she needed to act a little more like Shion. She cleared her throat and changed her tone back to the normal, sweet Shion voice that she was supposed to have. "And you'll just be surprised."

Keiichi seemed a little confused at the sudden change of attitude and tone, but he shrugged it off. "You'll be the one to be surprised, Sonozaki Shion!"

Mion calmly waggled her finger. "Save it for tomorrow. Right now, you better focus on your homework, because class is about to start!" she said, gesturing towards the door which Chie was beginning to open.

"Crap!" he cried out. The boy scampered over to a cabinet where all the math worksheets were kept and then set it flat on his desk, then grabbing a pencil and putting it down on his desk.

"All right class, lunch is over! Let's get working…"

As Chie began to talk, Mion thought. Even if this world was different, even if she was Shion, even if Rena wasn't here , and even if Satoko didn't seem to acknowledge the fact that she even existed in the first place, this world was actually looking to be pretty bright. Everything was happy here, despite how she had acted before. She was getting along fine, her friends were having fun, and she was fitting right in. Everything in this world was looking to be on the bright side, wasn't it?

…But then there was the case of the murderer.

Mion shook that off. No, this was a happy world. Even with something like that, it could not spoil rotten the fresh world before her. Yes, everything here seemed great so far, and Mion knew that even though she longed to go back to her own world, she would certainly enjoy her stay here.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3: Long Edition**

**I must start this Crimso's Corner V.3 by apologizing. This week was **_**insane. **_**I had a whole bunch of essays and history projects and homework and… argh! But I don't think it will be like that anymore. I promise I will try to be more productive this time, and I'm pretty sure that something like this isn't going to happen again. I just needed to sort things out this week and it worked out nicely, so for that, I'm glad. The last thing I want is this fanfiction to take as long as BFB and trust me, BFB took way too long to complete. It was only a little longer than GED and took two more months!**

**Don't take my word for it, though. If it happens again, please understand. First, I want to take a good look at what's happening. I have a math test on Thursday, and our grade is going on a ski trip Friday, so I will probably be spending Thursday night writing because I will have no homework, and the same goes for the weekend. I always take breaks on Saturdays, which is my day to do nothing, and I will always upload a chapter on Friday on Sunday. It's basically the schedule I follow. Upload whenever I can on the weekends, must upload on Fridays and Sundays, don't write on Saturdays. I almost never break this schedule. So with that, you can expect at least three chapters a week, but hopefully more.**

**Let's move on. We've got a little relationship developing here, which was the main point in this chapter other than to perhaps set up the mood. We already had a good idea of the mood, but I think this chapter gives a better light to it, you know? That was my intention, anyways. I hope you don't mind a little slow development. I realize that my developments were a little slow and I wanted to speed up for this fic, but I realized that it may not be effective if I rush so I decided to go for normal pacing. Hope you understand!**

**With that, I must proofread and take a shower. See you!**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: Really, there are times where I CANNOT think of chapter titles. **


	7. Chapter 6: Locked Heart

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**NO HOMEWORK! Well, actually, yes homework, but I did it all at school yesterday. Okay, so I still have some English homework, but I always do English homework at break, because it's easier for me to remember what happens in the chapter. I usually forget. And my English teacher always gives us these impossible quizzes. No one does well on them. So I have time to write before the new Mirai Nikki comes out. But now I'm rambling about stuff that doesn't even matter for no reason, so let's get on with this chapter.**

**Note: Okay. So I was a kid who grew up not playing card games. In all honesty, the only game I can play is Go Fish. That's why it's the only one that appears in my stories D:.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Six: Locked Heart_

Mion hummed a small tune to herself as she went through her math homework, scribbling down the answers to all the problems (which were, naturally, all wrong. It was doubtful she was trying in the first place) as other thoughts popped into her mind. First of all, there was the matter of what was going to happen afterschool that day. She smiled as she briefly cast a glance over to Keiichi, remembering the challenge that they had given each other the day before. They were to play a game of cards and see who was truly the best at card games.

Mion doubted that Keiichi was as good as he said. Judging by the fact that he was no different in this world, there was no reason why he should be good at playing cards. In her own world, Keiichi lost over half of the time, usually coming in last place or narrowly avoiding it through a stroke of luck. There were times where he did win but those were rare, and Mion was never too far away from first place in this occasions. Okay, sure, there were times where she ended up on the bottom of the rankings, but those were rare and once again only occurred through strokes of unluckiness, or perhaps luck for someone else.

With that in mind, she was sure that she would be able to win today's match against the boy. Not even taking the fact that she usually won into consideration, she had several ways to know that her victory was ensured. One, this world's Keiichi didn't know her strategy for playing. A lot of Mion's wins came from her cheating, and her preferred method of doing so in card games was to look at the back of the cards. That may not seem very effective, but with her deck of cards, it was the way to make victory a common occurrence. Her deck's cards were worn and tattered up, with scratches and tears on the back and very obvious marks. She had taken time to memorize each and every one.

Now, the problem of them being different in this world may have come up, but Mion fixed that. She went through each and every card and if their scars didn't match how they were in her world or if they didn't have them at all, she went ahead and made them. Each and every card was now identical to the one in her world, aside from the some that had tears or scratches in the places that they didn't back in her world, but she fixed that yet again by memorizing the differences. While it seemed odd to her at first that the cards were different in this world and none of the buildings or looks had changed, she realized that a lot of the cards tears and scratches came from her, and the lack of her presence would have made it so that there were no scars. She would spill drinks on them, accidently rip them or scratch them while playing, drop them in piles of mud or another staining substances, and sometimes even deliberately using these methods to change the cards. So for that reason, a lot of the cards didn't have the scratches on them that she always knew.

But that was all fixed now, and there was no way Keiichi would know her tactics, as he hadn't seen them before. Her victory was pretty much ensued at this point, unless Keiichi happened to see through her trap. Well, that brought her to point two of why she would win. If he indeed see through it and find out what she was doing, there was no way that he could memorize them all in a single game. Sure, he can memorize a few, but not all. She could recall one time, in a distance memory, where Keiichi had deliberately made a cut and tricked her, so she was prepared to watch him for that, though Mion had to wonder where that memory came from. She didn't recall it happening when he transferred in or any time after that… so where was it from? Mion shrugged it off. Maybe something was up with her head.

The matter of playing card games aside, Mion also had other things on her mind. She had been thinking about how to get back but she quickly pushed that aside, deciding that she would find out along the way of her stay here. What was on her mind now, though, was the differences that this world contained. There were some things that were quite obvious but there were also little differences, like the cards not having scratches or tears on them.

First, there was the obvious matter of herself, which she had gone over several times. She was Shion, not Mion, and that was because she had no tattoo in this world. They probably hadn't swapped on the day that she was supposed to receive the tattoo, thus making the permanent switch never take place.

Second, there was the fact that Satoshi was still here. He was supposed to have disappeared after he killed his aunt… but that didn't seem to be the case in this world. Perhaps he didn't kill his aunt? Mion wondered if this was the case.

Third, there was Rika. Rika… she was different somehow, but Mion couldn't put her finger on it. There was something just not Rika about the way she acted.

Fourth, there was Satoko. She hadn't even spoken to her since she had transferred in and Mion had rarely seen her interact with anyone, except for Satoshi when he went up to talk to her or Chie when she checked on Satoko's homework. Aside from them, though, she didn't talk to anyone. In fact, she was never the one to talk to someone, Chie or Satoko would talk to her and then she would engage in conversation, though it seemed she was reluctant to do so. She didn't even ask Chie for help when she needed it. She would wait for Chie to come to her, spend a while insisting that she didn't need any help, and then when Chie explained despite her protests, she would just nod and go back to her work.

Speaking of Satoko…

"Satoko, it's lunch time now," Satoshi said, pointing to the clock hanging above the heads of the students. "Come sit with my friends and I. We'll have a bunch of fun!" he insisted, a smile painting his face.

Satoko looked less than willing to comply. "No," she said bluntly and stubbornly.

Satoshi's smile twisted into a frown quite quickly. "Why?"

"Because," she said as she leaned over to her backpack, pulling out a bento box. She opened up the top to reveal a neatly made lunch full of various kinds of food, something that couldn't have been made by the rather clumsy Satoshi.

"Because…?" Satoshi asked.

"I don't need friends," she answered before she dug into her box with her chopsticks, whisking around the rice inside before placing it into her mouth and chewing. She waited to swallow before continuing. "Stop asking me this."

The differences were obvious. Satoko was usually a little sloppier when it came to arranging her bento box, though she was quite good at cooking anyways. Though she was quite a nice girl at times, she often did have a habit of talking when her mouth was still full of food. She didn't do it all the time, but when she had something to say, she didn't wait to swallow. Here, she had waited to swallow her food before she had spoke once again. And of course, there was the matter of her saying she didn't need friends.

What was that about? Satoko always loved being near her friends. To hear her say she didn't need them was shocking, to say the least.

"Come on, Satoko," urged Satoshi as he looked towards his friends, who had begun to clash their desks together to form one big table. "We'll have a lot of fun."

"Shut up!" hissed Satoko instantly, stunning Satoshi to the ground. "I don't need you or your stupid friends. Go have your stupid lunch with your stupid friends and leave me alone!"

This was something that stunned Mion, who had never even imagined that Satoko would speak such words. When Mion looked around at the others, she saw that all of them were equally as stunned as her. Perhaps she didn't use such harsh language usually?

This was something that prompted Shion to stand up and wander over to Satoko's desk, taking her place at Satoshi's side. She gave the little girl one of her signature sweet Shion smiles, trying to ease the girl. "Satoko, I'd love if you would come over and sit with us! We're really nice people and we have a lot of fun every day, usually just by chatting with each other. So if you would come over and sit with us, I'd be really happy. So come on, all you have to do is pull up your desk!"

However, this cheerful and friendly request was met by a response of the opposite attitude. "Go away. I don't need friends," she grumbled.

Shion didn't lose the happy smile, though. "Oh, but that's because you never had any friends before! I know that if you come and sit with us and have fun, you'll learn how great it is to have fun. I'm sure that you would blend right in with our group." She turned briefly towards the group currently sitting at the desk. "There's your brother, Satoshi, who is really kind and amazing…" Mion swore she saw a blush on Shion's face as she said those worlds, and she noted she wouldn't be surprised if that were really the case. "There's me, and I'm always looking forward to meeting new friends. There is my twin sister, Shion, who is new here but she's very friendly and amazing. She likes to play card games, too, so that should be fun! Oh, and then there's Keiichi, who is kind of a loser but he's nice anyways…" Keiichi didn't seem pleased with that explanation, as a comically annoyed look plastered his face. "And Rika, too! She's your age and you two would get along quite well."

Satoko, after listening to that explanation, didn't seem to change. She crossed her arms over her chest and stubbornly stuck her nose up in the air, tilting her head away from the pair of teenagers before her with her eyes closed. "I don't need friends!" she insisted.

After that, a twinge of annoyance appeared on Shion's face. "Why not?" she asked, her cheerful tone slowly dying.

"Because I don't need them!" she insisted. "Friends are for the weak. People who have friends are weak people who depend on them and can't do anything without them, and it's stupid. I'm strong enough on my own and I can do anything, so I don't need some stupid friends to get in my way." She huffed at Shion, turning towards her with a stubborn look on her face. "So just go away to your little, weak friends."

That was it. Shion's happy façade completely crashed and crumbled into a pile of rubble, which was quickly lit ablaze in a flare of anger. "Oh yeah? And why do you think that you're so strong now?" she asked, a look of complete rage on her face. "Are you some kind of king or something? Why do you think you can act like that?"

Satoko smirked. "I think that 'king' would be a pretty good fit, actually. I'm dependent on myself and no one else, and I'm stronger than anyone else. But then again, kings rely a lot on their knights and subordinates, so I guess not." She crossed her arms under her chest again, staring challengingly at the green-haired girl. "But I guess yeah, it's true that I don't need anyone else so I can act however I want! Who is going to boss _me_ around?"

Shion looked completely enraged by Satoko's attitude, and it seemed as if her flame of rage was about to set the roof on fire. "Oh yeah? Well then, I'll show you, you stupid little brat! Don't come crying to me when some guy comes and beats the crap out of you." She smirked as she stared at the girl. "Ahaha! I know. One day, your uncle and aunt are going to beat you up so badly that you ache all over, and you'll run crying to your brother, screaming 'Oh, Onii-sama! Save me! I can't handle this on my own! It hurts too much!' But you know what, Satoko? He'll laugh at you. I'll laugh. Because you deserve that, you damn brat." An evil smile cracked on her face, sending shudders through anyone watching the scene. "Ehehe… you'll see. You'll see now!"

Without warning, Shion snatched up a chair and positioned it right above Satoko's head, sending a cry of alarm to run through Mion. She had done this before in her world, and the last thing she wanted was for it to happen again. Mion jumped right to her feet and began to run towards Shion, determination blazing through her veins and soul.

However, before she could even reach the girl, Satoshi nudged the girl in the side, albeit a little violently. This touch caused Shion to turn around towards Shion, her smile and eyes losing some of its desire for harm.

He looked quite violent. "Mion, put the chair down," he ordered her.

"But Satoshi, she's being a little brat! I have to teach her a lesson!" she insisted.

Satoshi glared at her. "Mion, put the chair down. _No one_ touches Satoko," he growled.

At the sight of such a fierce glare coming from the eyes of the boy she loved, she put the chair down slowly, looking quite ashamed of herself. "Sorry, Satoshi-kun," she whispered. She then whipped around to the smirking blonde girl, growling and muttering threats under her breath.

Satoshi place a hand on Shion's shoulder, instantly silencing those quiet threats. With one last harsh look at the girl, Shion wandered away and plopped herself back down in her seat, grumbling.

Satoko leaned back in her chair. "Well, it looks like I win again."  
><em>Liar.<em> That was the one word that streamed through Mion's brain as she stared at the blonde girl. She didn't win, it was Satoshi that had saved her, but it looked like she wasn't about to admit that. Satoshi didn't even look like he was going to suggest it, as he quickly turned back towards his group of friends and took his seat.

Mion was in awe. She knew her sister could become very violent at times, but this was the first time in a long while she had seen her get this angry. There was a time back in her own world where she had beat up Satoko too, but it was for the opposite reason. It was because Satoko depended too much on Satoshi, not because she wasn't and therefore believed she didn't need anyone. Really, when her sister got mad, Mion swore that there was nothing scarier in the whole world. There had also been a time where she mentioned Satoshi after his disappearance, and Shion attempted to strangle her she got so mad, but as she noted before, that was something they tried to forget and didn't talk about.

Shion still looked a little irritated as she tapped her fingers on her desk, not even touching the beautifully made lunch that was set before her. Satoshi looked a little concerned, but he continued to eat his lunch. Rika and Keiichi made no comments as they looked about the table, having felt the uneasy atmosphere embracing the classroom. Mion placed the math homework in her bag, not having done so before due to being so lost in her thoughts and engrossed by the scene before her. She took out her lunch box and stared at it.

She felt like she needed to do something to ease the atmosphere, but in particular her rather irritated sister.

She stood up from her seat and placed a hand on her sister's shoulder, who just looked up at her. Mion gave her a soft smile, and after that was given, Mion swore she saw just a twinge of a smile growing on Shion's face in response.

"Mii, I want Satoko to be my friend some day," Rika commented as she stared into her bento box, which had bites taken out of it here and there. "I don't think she's as strong as she thinks.

"It was Satoshi that protected her, not herself," Keiichi pointed out. "I don't know why she does that."

"It's just how she is," whispered Satoshi.

Mion quickly noticed the look of annoyance that was growing back on Shion's face, so she didn't add any comments. Giving her sister another reassuring smile, Mion sat back down in her chair and thought a little about what she had just seen. It wasn't unlike Shion to do something like that, though she seemed a little unlike herself when she was lecturing Satoko about how no one would feel bad for her if she were to be beat. It seemed a little rude, even for her standards. Mion brushed it off, though, as being a part of this world's Shion.

Something caught her interest. Shion had mentioned Satoko's uncle and aunt and how they would beat her badly one day, which made Mion think that there had certainly been some abuse at the hands of her uncle and aunt going on. Whether or not it was still going on, though, was something she didn't know and something she decided not to ask because it would seem unnatural. But it seemed that it had certainly happened, so that was something to keep in mind. It was odd, though, that Satoko wasn't acting how she did when she was under abuse. When she was in her world, she was so broken and dependent on Satoshi.

So… was that… not the case here? It was the opposite, then?

This world was certainly strange.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After school that day, everyone left without a single word. The subject of Satoko and Shion's little incident earlier was something that no one decided to bring up, and Mion was sure it would turn into one of the many things she just didn't talk about with her sister. Satoko and Satoshi left together, not even speaking to each other, and Rika had gone home with a smile on her face in order to cheer up everyone, for that was the best thing she could do. Shion just silently left, a slight scowl on her face but nothing more.

Well, almost everyone had left, anyways. Mion found herself at the table with Keiichi, who was now sitting across from her.

They had both been a little uneasy from the incident from before and still were a little, but Mion was determined to kill off the tension as quickly as she could with a game of cards.

She took out the deck from her bag and began to shuffle them with skill as she stared at her opponent, who still looked a little tense from before. "Oh come on, Kei-chan! You think that you can beat me?" she challenged, trying to shake away any bad feelings that were still there.

A grin broke out, and Mion felt relief fill her as the normal Keiichi returned. "Oh, you'll see my skill, Sonozaki Shion! I'm only the best card player in the world. My parents and I had a contest one day and I won every single round! And that was when I was only six!" he boasted.

Mion was going to make the commented that at six years of age, his parents probably let him win, but she decided not to in the end. It would just be interesting to find out whether or not his words were truthful through the games that they were going to play.

"Oh, don't talk so big about yourself! It may end up being fatal for you in the end when you see how strong I am at playing these card games." She began to deal the cards, six each. She then placed the remaining pile of cards in the center of the table. After that was done, she picked up her cards and began to scan through them.

"Wait a second! What game are we playing?" Keiichi asked as he snatched up the seven cards given.

Mion grinned. "Oh, we're only going to play the master of card games! The king of all the games in all of existence!' she announced dramatically. "We're going to play Go Fish!"

Keiichi stared at Mion, dumbfounded by the announcement. "Wait a moment, we're playing _Go Fish?_ Huh… _Go Fish?_ Really, Shion? That's such an easy game!" he complained. "Listen, I think that we should play this one game I played with my mom and dad when I was little. It's a lot harder and more complicated, so I think it would be perfect for a showdown of skill like this one. It's called—"

Mion waggled her finger. "Tch! You don't understand a thing, now do you? Of course Go Fish is the simplest and easiest game, but that's the reason why we're playing it! Anyone should know how to play Go Fish and win every single round, and if you don't, then you shouldn't consider yourself a king of card games! So we'll play Go Fish and see who the true champion is through it!" she explained quite loudly.

Keiichi seemed a little hesitant to believe her at first, but then he seemed to accept her explanation as a large grin broke out across his face. "Sounds good to me! I'll just have to show you, then, how good I am at this kind of thing. Really, I'm great at Go Fish, and I'm warning you beforehand!"

Mion laughed loudly. "Don't be so sure of yourself, Kei-chan! Are you sure the only reason why you're good at Go Fish is because it's so easy? In that case, shouldn't I be good at it, too?"

"Well, I guess we'll have to find out!" he laughed.

Mion nodded. "Mhm!"

The two friends then took the time to scan over the many cards that were in their hands. In Mion's hand lay a four, a five, a ten, an eight, and two twos. She grinned wildly as she saw the two twos, placing them down on the ground in a pair. Now she only had five cards and held the advantage.

Well, not that it really mattered. She was going to win no matter what, anyways. Mion glanced up from her cards and stared at Keiichi, who was looking a little frustrated. He probably had no matches. Mion's eyes then drifted down to the cards being held in his hands, looking at each and every one of them carefully.

_The card with the bend on the bottom right and the scratch in the center is a one, the one with the scratch towards the bottom left is a three, the one that has a bend on both bottom corners and a scratch towards the right top is a five, the one that has a splash of grape juice on it with a tear coming from the top left is a six, the one with the tear coming from the right side and almost through the center is a nine, and the one with tears in all four corners and a scratch near the edge of the left is an eight. All right! I've got this one. _

"You go first," she purred confidently.

Keiichi gave her a "what's with the tone" look, but said nothing about it. He went back to looking at his cards and then up at Mion. "You have any fours?" he asked her.

Mion shook her head. "Go fish, Kei-chan!"

Keiichi grumbled and took another card, which Mion instantly recognized as being a ten.

"Got any tens?" she asked confidently.

Keiichi looked at the card he had just picked up and handed it over to the smirking girl.

Within one round Mion had already gotten rid of half of her cards and got two pairs, causing Keiichi a great deal of panic. "Uh… uh… have any fives?"

Mion handed over her five to a grinning Keiichi, though Mion didn't seem all that bothered. Either way, he was going to lose. He had one match and she had two, and her number of matches was going to increase by one in about five seconds.

"Have any eights?" she asked the boy.

Keiichi cried out in panic as he handed her over an eight, making the number of matches that she had three. He was at the clear disadvantage here.

"Got any threes?" he asked her as he scanned through his cards.

"No, Go Fish."

When Keiichi had finished collecting his card, a two, Mion realized that she only had a four and Keiichi had no fours, meaning that she basically had to guess incorrectly on purpose in order to continue onwards with the game. "Have any fours?" she asked with a sigh. It was hard to finish a game of Go Fish sometimes when it came to the point where no one else had the one card someone had left, and then it usually came down to who had the most pairs when the deck emptied.

Keiichi grinned wildly and shook his head. "Go Fish, Shion!" he declared loudly with great happiness in his voice, glad to have finally beat Mion and getting to speak those words.

Shion sighed and as she reached for a card, she wished that it would be a four. Unfortunately, for the girl, it ended up being a ten, which Keiichi also didn't have.

Keiichi had two piles and Mion had three. He was catching up, and Mion knew that she wouldn't be able to make a match the next round. Then again, Keiichi wouldn't be able to, either.

"Have any ones?" he asked.

Mion shook his head. Keiichi grabbed a card, which Mion identified as being a eight. Neither of them had any eights, so it was just adding more cards to the pile in the end.

"Tens?" she asked, staring at her small amount of cards.

Keiichi shook his head and pointed towards the pile of cards.

Mion snatched a three from the pile of cards and grinned when she looked up at Keiichi, who was holding a three in his hand. She could at least make one match and increase the amount of pairs she had up to four, giving her more of an advantage once again.

"Have any sixes?" he asked her.

Mion shook her head and Keiichi collected a ten, which made her grin once again. She could get rid of her ten now, which left her four with the only card that didn't have a match in Keiichi's hand. Oh well, he would probably grab one in the many times that he was to pick up a card.

"Got any threes?" she asked him.

Keiichi reluctantly handed his three over. Mion happily paired it with her three and placed it down, making the total number of matches she had four.

"Have any tens?" Keiichi asked.

Mion cursed Keiichi's good luck and handed over her ten, and Keiichi grinned as he placed it down with his own ten. It was now back to Mion being over Keiichi's amount by one, and with her only having a four card, which he still didn't have. She would have to go ahead and guess again, even though she knew that it was wrong. Well, she supposed it would just give her another match if she were to pick up a card Keiichi had, but…

Mion snatched a six and smiled. "Got any sixes?" she asked him, knowing the answer to that already. Yes, he did have a six, and now her pile was increased to five pairs and only one card remaining.

"Man, I can't catch up!" cried Keiichi as he stared at the number of piles she had in comparison to the number of piles he had, and then the number of cards. If Mion were to match up the four she had there, the game would be over and then it would end with her winning because of the number of pairs she had. "You're really good!"

Mion laughed. "Of course I'm good! I warned you, and you still wanted to take me on! You'll just have to see how good I am with this!"

"Well you'll see!" he yelled out. His attention returned to his cards, and then he looked at Mion. He knew that the only card she had now was a four, and since he didn't have a four either, he was also forced to guess a random card that he knew wasn't going to be right.

"Got any nines?" he asked, knowing the answer was wrong.

As he suspected, Mion shook her head and Keiichi reached for the pile, snatching up another card. When Keiichi looked at it, a grin spread across his face, and Mion knew exactly why. That card, which had a tear in the center of the top of the card with a splash of juice positioned near the center but slightly towards the bottom right, was a nine card, exactly what he had been asking for. This meant that he got to pair up the two cards and he was allowed to go for another turn, though then again it meant that he would have to guess a card he knew was wrong.

"Fisher's luck! I get another match!" he yelled happily as he paired up the two cards. "And that means I can go again! Do you have any twos?"

Mion shook her head and Keiichi reached for another card, which luckily did not happen to be a card he had and thus he didn't get another match. However, it was a three and not a four, so that meant Mion was stuck asking for another card that she knew wasn't going to be a right answer.

"Have any fours?" she sighed again.

He shook his head. "Go fish!"

Mion reached for the pile and pulled out a card, and when she looked at it, a grin that mirrored the one Keiichi had been previously wearing painted her face. He instantly knew what that meant and gulped. "Ahaha! Got the one I asked for! How funny is that? It just happened to you!" she slammed the four cards down on the table. "And that means that we count the number of piles we have since I have no more cards. The one with the most wins!"

They didn't even need to count.

"And that means I win." She began to gather up the cards on the table, smiling at Keiichi victoriously. "Who is the champion of cards now?"

"Hey! It was just one time!" he yelled out in frustration. "That doesn't mean that I won't win the next time that we play!"

Mion laughed. "You can't be sure of that! Maybe I'm just good and win every time."

"I doubt it!" he cried.

Mion just responded to this by laughing again. "Well, we'll have to see when we play another round of cards. I'd like to stay and play some more, Kei-chan, but I had to go home now or my grandmother is going to wonder why I'm not home yet, and trust me, she can be very scary at times." She shuddered at the very thought of the old woman, a chill running up her spine like a blizzard. "Yeah, you get the idea. Well, we'll have another match, okay?" she said.

"And I'll show you that time how good I am!" declared Keiichi, a triumphant smile plastering his face. "You just wait, Sonozaki Shion! I'll prove to you that I'm not a loser and that I can beat you at cards!"

"I'll be waiting! Ahaha!"

Mion smiled. This was just like having fun with him and playing with him back in her own world. For a moment in the middle, she had almost forgotten that she was in another world. Keiichi calling her Shion had pulled her out of it, though, and she had quickly remembered. Still, though, it was exactly the same and Mion wondered if she would have ever realized if he didn't happen to say her name then. Really, this world wasn't too bad. She could still have fun here with Keiichi.

The rematch was going to be interesting. She was sure, though, that she was going to win.

After all… he didn't realize she had been cheating the whole time.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner v.3**

**Whew! It's all done. And it isn't three AM in the morning! Well, that's what I get when I start writing much earlier, I suppose, but then again I guess it's Sunday and I usually finish earlier due to the fact that I don't stay up as late on Sundays. And Mirai Nikki still isn't out! Well, I guess if it doesn't come out and releases tomorrow, I will have something to brighten up my dull, boring Mondays. Because everyone hates Mondays!**

**I don't have very much to say here. I hope I will be able to update sometime this week, but keep in mind I won't be able to update on Friday as usual because of the Ski Trip. I'm pretty sure that I will be able to on Thursday instead, and I will try during the week to finish another chapter because we may not have as much homework because of the Ski Trip and not being able to have enough time to do projects, etc. The Ski trip is only a day long so it's nothing to worry about. I'm not even skiing. I don't know how to and have no interest in learning. The lodge should be fun to hang out in, though, considering one of my friends isn't going skiing either.**

**With that, there's nothing more to say. I hope that you all liked this chapter, and I hope this fanfiction is going at an okay pace and that it's going well so far! I can't wait to write some of the later chapters, those are always the ones that are more fun to write. It was the same for GED and BFB. And then you know what's going to be written after WAN…! …EOG is going to be tough, but fun. I hope you're looking forward to what's happening later in this fanfiction, and of course my next fanfiction!**

**~Crimso**


	8. Chapter 7: Hopes

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I could go on about why I'm writing and starting a new chapter during class, but I'll just cut you some reading time and explain right away. I'm in Spanish Class. My teacher happens to be absent. The only thing he gave us to do was study. The test is a week away. I know almost all the material. There! I pretty much summed it all up, so now I don't need to go on with the ramblings and just cut right to the chapter.**

**All notes from previous chapters apply, like the ones about me getting Shmion mixed up, shorter chapters overall instead of long ones, etc.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Seven: Hopes_

Mion let out a large yawn as the rays of sunlight beaming through her window glared into her eyes. She grumbled slightly, rubbing her eyes exhaustedly. Upon turning around, she noticed that her sister had already gotten out of her futon. _Well, I guess I can't sleep any longer. Gotta get up. _Mion pretty much dragged herself up to her feet and began to walk slowly over to the sliding door, which had already been open from her sister leaving he room and being too tired to bother closing it behind her.

Mion stumbled down the hallway, exhaustion filling her vision. She didn't usually feel this tired when she woke up, but last night she had found herself unable to go to sleep due to the many thoughts that were scrambling about in her head. They were mostly about the situation she was in right now. No matter how many times she went over it, she still couldn't figure out answers. And no matter how many times she tried to tell herself not to think about it and that it would come along the way, she found that she would still ask herself these questions every break that she got. The longing to go home had increased that night, when she had thought about the little incident between her sister and Satoko. Such a thing would never occur in this time back in her own world. Seeing Satoko like that broke her heart, and it made her want to return.

So she had gone over the many ways she could return. Of course there were no answers, so it was pretty much a waste of time, but in the moment it felt satisfying to try to make some progress with her situation. In the end, all the thinking had only left her with zero answers and a terrible case of exhaustion.

Mion plopped down at the kitchen table, yawning as she did so. Her sister sat next to her, not looking nearly as tired as her poor sister currently was. She was sitting there, still in her night clothing, with a hand cupping her cheek and her elbow standing on the table to support her head. She looked bored as she awaited the servants to finish cooking whatever they decided to give the pair for breakfast. Usually it wasn't anything fancy, but none of them really cared too much. They usually had to wolf down the breakfast anyways.

Eventually it was made, and Mion slowly began to eat the contents of her breakfast. She was barely processing the taste of the food as she chewed almost robotically, the small amounts of her consciousness filled by random thoughts that weren't even relevant to the situation at hand. Her brain wouldn't let her think properly.

Shion turned to her sister and noticed how slowly she was eating, and in response to this, she nudged her gently.

Mion turned to look towards her sister.

"Come on, Shion, you have to eat quicker," she urged her sister. "We're going to be late for school."  
>Mion just nodded and began to eat at a slightly faster pace.<p>

She still wasn't feeling all that great, though. Her sister's nudge had been a slight reminders that she had to wake up and get moving with the day, even if she was tired from spending last night thinking about things that didn't even matter in the end. Even if she was stuck here for now, she had to keep going. She told herself for another time that she would figure things out as she went along, but she was beginning to feel a little unsure about that.

The door to the room opened up, revealing an old, grumpy figure. It was none other than the twins' grandmother, Sonozaki Oryou. Mion caught the fierce gaze of her grandmother, who didn't look pleased in the slightest at seeing her younger granddaughter's face so early in the morning. Mion instantly averted her gaze and began to eat a little quicker, suddenly feeling rather uncomfortable. She knew her grandmother wasn't a bad person, and she very much loved her in her world, but something about her very presence in this world was uncomfortable. It was most definitely because of how Oryou felt about Shion, though Mion never thought she would be so scared of her grandmother's gaze. Okay, so she was afraid of her as a child, but she was sure in her teenage life that she wouldn't ever fear her grandmother, as she had found out quite quickly that she wasn't really a bad person. For that reason, the harsh gaze just seemed that much more frightening.

Oryou noticed Mion's reaction and mumbled something under her breath, and whatever it was, Mion was pretty sure it wasn't something positive. Oryou then took a seat at the table.

"Mion," she spoke in her gruff voice.

Mion was about to open her mouth to speak, but she quickly realized what she was doing and shut it the moment her grandmother's eyes laid its gaze on her.

"…Is something wrong?" she asked Mion.

"H-Huh? Oh, nothing's wrong!" Mion exclaimed quite quickly, having been startled by her just opening her very mouth. Her heart was pounding with fear in her chest, and Mion told herself to calm down. It was just her grandmother, not some kind of crazy monster that would tear her to shreds the moment she even looked at the girl. However, Mion had to admit that she sometimes felt that was really the case.

"Good," she grumbled.

Oryou stood there for a few moments, looking from Mion to Shion. Mion was quite puzzled by her actions at first, until Shion decided to speak up. "I'm Mion," she told her.

"I know that!" she snapped.

Mion quickly realized that was a lie and she had been trying to figure out which of them was which, which wasn't very surprising considering how they were both wearing night clothing with their hair down, leaving no indication as to which twin was twin. She wondered if that was why she had said something to her in the fist place, because she didn't know that she was Shion and assumed that she was Mion.

"Mion, I hope you realize that we have many things to discuss after you get home from school involving _that_ matter, so don't waste any time and get back to the manor the moment the teacher lets you out. I will not be happy if you waste a single second," she spoke in her usual gruff and old yet intimidating voice. "As you know, it's very important that we talk about this."

"I know, Batcha. I'll be sure to come over as soon as school as over," Shion spoke, allowing her chopsticks to clatter down to the table as she finished her meal.

Mion grew curious. "Is it about Uncle Kurou's death?" she asked, unable to control her curiosity. However, the moment she said it, she instantly regretted it. She realized very quickly that she was Shion, who was supposed to not involve herself in family matters and in fact wasn't even supposed to know about the incident.

Her grandmother instantly shot her a harsh look, and Mion felt a lump of lead grow instantly in her throat. "How do you know about that?" she practically hissed at the younger one of the green-haired twins.

Mion said nothing.

"I thought I told you not to meddle with the affairs of the Sonozaki family!" she cried out. "I don't care what the matter may be, but you are in no way allowed to find out or be involved in what we are currently going through and trying to take care of. You are not even supposed to know about this. How did you find out? Were you eavesdropping on our conversations and meetings, or was it your sister that told you about it?" she asked, turning to look towards the older twin briefly.

Mion gulped. She didn't want to say that her sister had told her, because then she would probably get in a great amount of trouble, but if she said she had been eavesdropping on their conversation, she would get into much more trouble. She was conflicted in that moment, not knowing whether or not she wanted to take harsh punishment or to force her sister take the bullet for her. She hesitated for quite a while, remaining there with a look of silence painting her face.

"I told her," Shion said, interrupting Mion's chain of thoughts and causing her to turn towards the girl with a look of surprise on her face. "It was bound to come up eventually, though, and I couldn't just hide the death of our great uncle from her. She would find out soon enough one way or another." The way that she spoke to her grandmother was unnaturally calm, especially for Shion. It was the best way to deal with the old woman, though, as Mion noted from experience. She must have picked it up as well.

"She isn't supposed to know about those things, Mion, and you know that very well too," Oryou spoke.

"Yes, but it was about the death of our great uncle," Shion pointed out.

Oryou turned her gaze towards Mion, giving her a rather harsh look. "Do you know anything else?"

Mion shook her head quite quickly.

"Well, I suppose I'll let this one slide because Mion is right, you would have found out about his death one way or another, but I will not forgive you on any other subject matter. Do you understand?" she said, staring into Mion's green eyes with her usual harsh look that would silence anyone.

It worked quite well on the girl, for she proceeded to nod her head. "I understand. This is the only thing that I know about and I assure you I won't find anything else out," Mion said in her respectful tone, hoping it would calm a little bit of her grandmother's rage. "I am sorry about finding out about Uncle Kurou…"

"Good," Oryou said quickly before she stood up from her seat. "Mion, I expect to see you at home as soon as school comes out. That's all." The old woman turned around and went for the door, though right before she left, she turned around just barely to give Mion another piercing look that lasted about half a heartbeat. Then, just as soon as that expression was dressed on her face, she left.

The twins stood there in silence for a few seconds, neither of them really knowing what to say. Mion looked down at her breakfast and suddenly decided that it no longer looked like the appetizing food from moments before. The tension that had been created was actually scaring her somewhat. She hadn't ever expected her grandmother to be so harsh on her, and she was sure that this was just a bitter taste of what was to come later in this world. While her grandmother always secretly loved Shion, she never showed it and treated her harshly. Heck, Mion wasn't even sure if that even applied to this world. Either way, she was sure that this would not be the last of her grandmother's harsh language and tone towards her, and that this was not even half of what she would be receiving later.

"Don't mind Batcha," Shion said. "You know how she is."

"I know how she is," mumbled Mion.

There was more silence that followed after that. None of the twins really knew what to say to each other. The atmosphere had been spoiled rotten the moment the old woman had walked in there, though there really hadn't been much of one in the first place.

"Any updates on the matter?" Mion asked, wanting to find some sort of conversation to chase away the awkward silence.

Shion shook her head. "Not that I know of, anyways. You were right when you asked if the meeting was about Uncle Kurou. It is. We're going to discuss the evidence that may have turned up in the last few days from investigation. Truth be told, though, there isn't very much. We know he was killed with a butcher knife but we couldn't find the knife anywhere… I think I told you that already, though. In any case, the murder took place outside and away from most people so there's no indication of who could have been there at the time. We don't know why someone would murder him anyways. He hasn't been involved with the Sonozaki family's matters at all so there's no reason anyone would really want to target him. It could be just a murder for the sake of fun, though." She sighed and shook her head. "So, as you can see, there's no clues or indication as of yet."

"Hm…"

Mion had to wonder who would kill him based on those clues. All her great uncle really did was sit in the shadows of the Sonozaki family and say nothing other than the occasional criticism. He used to be involved with business matters but he had since stopped. Why anyone would kill him was beyond her, and the only explanation she could come up with was the one Shion said, that the murderer could have just done it for the sake of murder.

"That's kind of scary. Let me know more on the subject when it comes up," Mion commented.

"Of course I will!"

Mion smiled at her sister. She was glad that she had a sister so supportive like her.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion sighed as she watched Satoshi begin talking to Satoko, apparently trying to convince her to move over and join the rest of his friends like before. She knew that it wasn't going to go anywhere, so Mion had to wonder why Satoshi kept trying. Satoko in this world was just too stubborn for that, and the sight of watching him trying was almost painful for anyone to lay eyes on. She could not hear words, but what was being said could be interpreted by their expressions and their body language. Satoko was, as usual, wearing that stuck-up look on her face with Satoshi looking a little upset with her behavior. Clearly he was trying to nicely convince her, but it wasn't going in his favor.

Mion turned towards her friends. Rika had started talking to Shion randomly about the stuffed kitten that she had bought at the store the other day, and Mion wasn't quite sure if she had done it to distract her like the Rika of her world would have done or if she was just oblivious to the scene in front of her. Either way, Shion seemed to be interested in the topic and whatever attention she had had on Satoshi and Satoko before was drifted over to the young blue-haired girl. It was probably for the better, considering what had happened the other day.

Keiichi, on the other hand, was watching the scene before him. He seemed as if he too was sure Satoshi's attempts to get his sister to join his group of friends, judging by his facial expression.

Mion didn't like the atmosphere. It seemed too dark.

She turned to Rika and Shion. Well, if Rika really was trying to distract Shion, which she doubted for some odd reason, then perhaps she should do the same.

"So, Kei-chan, how are you today?" she asked.

Keiichi turned towards the girl. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine," he replied.

Mion smiled at him. "That's good to hear. You walked in late today, though. Did you sleep in?" she asked. She was making up random conversation on the spot, but at least it was doing some good in distracting him from the scene before them.

The brown-haired boy rubbed the back of his head, a little embarrassed by the look of it. "Well, I had a hard time getting to sleep last night because my mom and dad were up talking about some random things, so I was understandably a _little_ tired in the morning, and I happened to sleep in a _tiny_ bit…"

"So, in short, yes," Mion said.

Keiichi grumbled.

"You could have just said that from the beginning," Mion pointed out. "You didn't need to give me a whole speech about how you slept in in a way that made it seem like it was completely justified and perhaps didn't even happen!"

"It was justified, no matter how I made it sound!" protested Keiichi.

The green-haired girl stuck out a finger and waggled it at him "Tch! I can see through what you're trying to hide in your words, so don't even bother!"

"Because sleeping in definitely hasn't happened to you, either," commented Keiichi.

Mion was thrown off a little by that comment. "H-Hey!" Of course she had slept in several times before. It was something that tended to happen to people of all ages. "Well you know what, Kei-chan? I was tired this morning but I decided not to sleep in and I went straight towards breakfast! I didn't waste a second even though I was even more tired than I had ever been in my entire life _combined. _So I don't think that you have an excuse, Kei-chan."

"Well that's just you! We're different people and we function differently, okay?" he cried.

Mion simply laughed.

Even though these conversations with Keiichi were pretty much pointless, she enjoyed having them. It was these kinds of conversations that were the happiest, even though they tended to fade away quickly in her mind. They still left an impact, though, and that was mostly build up in their relationship. Without these pointless conversations, she would have probably never become friends with anyone that she knew, be it Keiichi or anyone else in the whole school. For that same reason, Mion wondered if this conversation was doing any good on Keiichi's opinion of her. She already thought of him as a good friend due to knowing him in another world, but Keiichi didn't. Well, maybe now and after the card games he did, but that aside.

Unfortunately, the time she had given herself to think led to Keiichi being distracted by Satoko and Satoshi. The two of them had not stopped talking to each other yet, and it seemed like no progress had been made, as usual. Mion sighed as she watched such a scene take place, with Satoshi wearing a look of desperation on his face and Satoko sitting there with a stubborn look plastered all over her face.

"I wonder why she's like that," Keiichi commented. "If she would just try having some friends, maybe she would change."  
>"I'm not sure about that," Mion admitted. "I think that, if she tried to have friends, she would just be too stubborn about it and not be able to make them in the first place. And even if she did, she would probably end up looking down on them."<p>

"True, but it would be nice if she could, you know, just try it for once. She hasn't ever talked to me other than when I bump into her accidently and she yells at me for doing so. I tried talking to her once but she quickly brushed me off." He sighed loudly as he recalled the memory of doing so. "But maybe she would be able to learn how good it is to have friends when she tried. I don't know, Shion. There's no way we can tell."

Mion narrowed her eyes as she looked at the two siblings. No progress had been made and Mion wondered when the blonde-haired boy would just give up. There was no way that she was going to join them, and so the whole conversation was useless. He had tried to convince her many times before, and yet, each time he failed to make any progress. The whole scene just appeared to be repeating itself over and over again in front of her face, showing no signs of changing at all. She wondered why he would bother after so many times of failing, but she figured he just wanted the best for his little sister. There was no way one could be truly happy without friends, and Satoshi surely knew this.

"Has she always been like this?" Mion asked.

"For as long as I've been here. Satoshi has told me that she really hasn't had a friend in her entire life, so I'm assuming that she has been always like this. It's kind of sad, when you think about it." He looked down at his desk. "There was a point in time where I didn't have any friends, either. I told myself that I was happy how I was but I knew deep down inside that that couldn't be the truth, and only now when I look back on it do I realize that I really did just want to have friends. I'm sure it's the same for Satoko."

His words caused Mion to become very interested in what he was talking about. Mion did know a lot about Keiichi's past in her own world, but not whether or not it applied to this one. Keiichi had told her that, when he lived in the city, the only thing he truly cared about were his grades and nothing else. However, at one point, he got bored of grades and took a model gun and began to shoot unsuspecting kids with pellets. This went on until he shot a young girl in the eye, and then he confessed to his parents. After, he moved to Hinamizawa. It was a sad little tale, and it probably would have never happened had he had friends.

"You didn't have any friends?" Mion said.

He nodded. "Yeah, it's a little bit of a depressing story when I look back on it. You know, I was fine with it at that time, but really… I don't know how I could survive without having friends. It's become such an important part of my life now. Whenever I have a problem or something I want to talk about, be it big or small, I can just run over to my friends and start talking! It's just that simple. But if I consider how life would be without being able to do that, I wonder how I survived." He looked over at Satoko and Satoshi again. "I think it would be the same for Satoko. She would refuse to be friends at first, but… you know, she'd become a good friend over time! She'd fit in perfectly, I'm sure. Rika's been looking for a good friend around her age. Satoko would work completely for that role. Then, I'm sure it would be the same as me. She would look back on these times and wonder just what was it that kept her going."

"I sure hope so," Mion said. She too was missing the old Satoko, who was so full of fun and was always an amazing friend to all. The Satoko that stood in front of her now, who refused to socialize with anyone at all and was refusing all offers of friendship, was completely contrasted the playful, trickster Satoko that she knew so well. This young girl was not Satoko.

Keiichi leaned back in his seat. "I wonder what gets her by in life. For me, it was grades. I was a pretty good student and I spent a lot of my time studying and getting good grades, so it was something that motivated me. I loved hearing the praises I got from my teachers! I loved it when my parents gave me extra allowance and said such amazing compliments to me whenever I would show them my grades! It was something I was proud of and it made me go through with life. And yet, as time went on, it became something dull. I couldn't live off those grades anymore. It just became the same old things every single day, and I wanted a change." He paused for a good while. "That's why I'm sure that the same thing will happen to Satoko. Whenever she gets bored of being alone and pretending she's the queen of everyone, she'll open her heart up and we'll all become good friends. That's just what I wish for, anyways." He smiled at the very thought. "Yeah, I think everyone would get along well with Satoko."

From what Mion could tell, his story was very similar to the one that Keiichi had in her world. Even though she was sure that it would seem odd, Mion decided to press the subject. For some reason, she felt as if she needed to know this information, no matter what.

"What happened after that?" she asked.

Keiichi looked up at the ceiling, a distant look in his eyes as he did so. "Well, things became… complicated. I decided that I wanted to do something fun and adventurous. You know, change up my life for once! Do something that I didn't usually do. So that's exactly what I did. I happened to pass this store on my way home from the local café one day, and I noticed something in the window. It was a model gun. I had plenty of money from my parents for getting good grades, so I thought 'hey, why not?' I bought the gun and then this sick, twisted idea of a little game popped into my mind." A dark look swept through his face. "I decided to stir up a little trouble. After school every day, I hid in a dark alley and waited for young kids to walk by. Whenever I would see them, I would shoot pellets at them and watch as they ran away screaming."

"It was fun to see what a commotion it caused. People everywhere were talking about it, and schoolteachers were advising children to go home with a partner. Heck, they even plastered signs everywhere in schools about it! It felt good seeing what an impact it had on people. The feeling was totally different from anything I had ever felt before, and I decided that I liked it much better than the grades!" Keiichi continued to explain.

"But that all fell one day, when I accidently shot a young girl in the eye with one of the pellets. I instantly ran home and read the instruction manual, which clearly said not to shoot someone in the eye or it could cause blindness. I felt guilt at once, and I told my parents everything. They were shocked, and then… well, after a long while of unpleasant stuff that came after my confession, we decided to move here," he finished.

Mion was surprised. This story was identical to the one that she had heard back in her own world, with no changes at all. She wondered why she was so surprised after that. It was why he had moved here, after all, and if it didn't happened then he might as well not be here. Well, perhaps she had been expecting a little twist to the tale at least, but there was none.

_Seriously, is there anything different about this guy?_ Right down to his personality and backstory, Keiichi seemed exactly the same, unlike everyone else who had noticeable differences. Really, it seemed like everything about him was the same. Not that that it was a bad thing. It was in fact a good thing, as Mion was happy to have someone so unchanged by her side.

"Wow. That must be terrible trying to remember…" Mion whispered.

Keiichi nodded. "I don't like thinking about it, but I figured I would tell you. I'm your friend, after all. It hurts to think about what kind of person I was." He looked over to Satoko again, nodding his head. "And I'm sure it would be the same for her when she, or if she, decides to become friends with us. Really, those memories are painful for me, and I'm sure they will be for her…"

Keiichi did look quite troubled by the subject of his old memories, and Mion regretted having brought it up. It was painful for him to recall such a memory, and she had forced him to do so.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to make you feel upset."

"No," he muttered. "It's fine."

Silence followed. Mion wasn't sure what to say, so she decided not to say anything at all. Upon looking back to Satoko and Satoshi, she wondered if Keiichi's words were really true. Would Satoko ever get better, and if so, would she look back upon these memories and wonder why she would have ever been able to live in such a way? She wondered if Satoko would ever turn to them and become friends. Mion definitely missed the old Satoko, and having her around for the time that she was in this world would be very comforting. It just wasn't the same without her daily, silly pranks and her mischievous personality. The whole group of friends just seemed to be off without her, among other things that seemed off about the club in this world.

For Satoko's sake, and for her own sake, she hoped so.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Let me start out by apologizing. I did not want this to happen. I didn't want to have to update again only on the weekends, and I said that the last time was going to be the last time, but it looks like I lied. Really, I'm sorry. A lot of things happened. First of all, school happened. My grades this year suck and I want to bring them up again for this quarter, so I will be spending a lot more time with my homework. I got all Bs this quarter and I realized just how much I've gone down, so I have to work harder no matter what. Also, aside from that, I got sick. Well, I pretty much had a bad sore throat for most of two days ago and yesterday, but that turned into a fever and a bad cold. I've stopped throwing up and my sore throat and stuffy nose are gone, but I'm still violently coughing. I had to miss the ski trip, too…**

**So I hope you can understand what has been going on in my life. I know this fanficiton is also important, and it is VERY important to me, but I have to say that at this point I really need to pull myself together in terms of grades. Things just aren't working out this year. So if my updates are slow, you know the reason. Yet, I have to wonder how my grades during GED were the best grades I had ever gotten. So for those two reasons, I'm going to try to balance things out, but don't be surprised if it fails and my updates slow.**

**I just hope that I can get this done. I'm worried about it. Don't worry, I know this will be done before the time I have to go to camp, but I was really hoping that I would have some extra time to do a few oneshots or maybe a short fic…**

**~Crimso**


	9. Chapter 8: Cheerful Child

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I'm feeling a lot better today. I'm dreading the idea of school and I wish that I had been sick on Monday instead of Friday, you know, when we had the school trip. I would have missed classes and not a day that could have been fun, then! Man, I hate how I always get sick on the worst days. This year, I got sick after Thanksgiving during break (no school), I got sick this week when we had a day spent on a field trip (no classes!) and the time before that where I was equally as sick as I was this time during the break I had from BFB to Wan, I had a short day! Really?**

**Note One: I know Rika's age is often assumed to be around twelve, but for the sake of this fanfiction, she's nine. Her age has been stated to be between anywhere from nine to thirteen, so this guess is fine. I know it's not usually used but that's how I'm going with my fanfiction, and it's never been confirmed otherwise, so it's fine. **

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Eight: Cheerful Child_

Mion relaxed as she buried herself into the sheets of her comfortable futon. Today was Sunday, meaning that she didn't have to go to school at all. She enjoyed her days off, though she found them to be boring at times. Right now, she had nothing to do but relax in the futon. Her sister was tending to family matters at the moment and Mion obviously couldn't talk, and her friends were probably off doing Their own thing. Yes, while relaxing, these days off could certainly be considered quite boring.

The girl stood up from her futon. Well, might as well do something so that she wasn't wasting her time. Turning towards the bag that she had brought a few of her things in, she thought about that paper she had had before. It had been a while since she had written down the facts that she knew, and she figured that she would start up again.

Mion ran to the bag and tore the piece of paper out after a bit of fishing, then setting the piece of paper down on the single desk that the twins had to share. She grabbed a pencil that had been left out after homework and began to write.

_Four: The me here used to be depressed._

She didn't know too much about her past self here, but she did know this one fact. She didn't know how she became depressed, but Mion was sure it had to do with the pressure the Sonozaki family had put on her, and how they had ostracized her. She wasn't sure just _how_ well they had treated her in the world, but it looked to be pretty bad. She still wasn't too sure about how her grandmother actually thought of her, but the incident at breakfast before seemed to show a negative appreciation. Then again, she could be hiding herself and her true feelings, just like usual.

She paused. What else was there to write? She wasn't exactly sure, so she decided to move on and add the details about her friends.

_One: Shion is me._

That was the first thing that came to mind. It was because the whole incident with the twin swapping on the day that she was supposed to get the tattoo didn't happen, and therefore, she had the tattoo and Mion didn't.

_Two: She seems to act a lot like herself in some ways, but not like herself in others._

Shion had definitely gained traits from being raised to be the Sonozaki head, like the ability to remain calm some of the time, though her problem with getting too angry and lashing out remained, as evident by the little incident with Satoko and the incident with Oryou when she was asking if her sister could move in. She also had the habit of teasing her sister, and she definitely still had that pretty large crush on Satoshi. Speaking of him…

_Three: Satoshi is here._

She didn't know why he was here, though. That was the main problem about this. She could assume that the whole incident with him beating his aunt to death never happened, as that was the main reason he disappeared in the first place. Of course, it would be very hard to find out the details, so Mion shook off the thought and decided to move on.

_Four: Rena isn't._

Once again, she figured it had something to do with the whole incident that caused her to move didn't happen. Mion knew that something had happened with Rena's father and mother causing them to get a divorce, which Rena heavily blamed on herself, so that probably didn't happen. Another huge factor in this was that Rena claimed to have met with Oyashiro-sama, the great god of the village who looked down upon his villagers and was said to curse people who didn't follow his rules of staying loyal to the village and him. Did that not happen, either? Mion wasn't sure.

_Five: Satoko is different. She doesn't have any friends and claims she doesn't need to, no matter how many times Satoshi insists that she comes over and makes new friends._

Mion had no idea why. Perhaps it was related to their aunt, who Satoshi probably didn't kill, but that the only idea she had. Why would it change her personality, anyways? It was all a mystery.

_Six: Rika's…_

Mion didn't finish that sentence. Rika was different, but how? She figured she would have to wait a little longer before finishing it.

Looking down on her sheet of paper, she wondered now that it was all drawn out for her, if she could connect the dots. Mion reached for another sheet of paper on the side of the desk and then placed it down in front of her, with the other sheet of paper beside it. She glanced down the list at the reasons, and what little her mind had come up with to justify the reasons why these things were different. First, she would start with Satoshi and Satoko, since they probably had a parallel due to being siblings. Mion assumed that since Satoshi was here, his aunt couldn't have died, so she wrote down Satoshi's name and then a note saying that his aunt hadn't died. She drew a line from that note that led to Satoko's name, and then a note that said that her behavior was rude and different.

They could be connected, but Mion didn't see how.

Mion wrote Rena's name on the paper, then a label that said missing on it. She drew an arrow that pointed to the note, and then a little description describing why she thought that Rena hadn't gone away, which was about her parents maybe not getting a divorce and her probably not meeting with Oyashiro-sama.

She drew her sister's name and her name, and connected the two of them. She wrote underneath them that the tattoo incident had not happened, meaning they were swapped.

Mion did not write down Rika's name. She knew nothing about her yet, just that she seemed different somehow.

Then, she observed her work, trying to find parallels. From what she could see, all of the differences were caused by something not happening, if Satoko's aunt not dying was indeed the reason why she was acting the way she was. _Is that it? So then that means something also didn't happen in Rika's past. But what is it? _Mion didn't know enough about Rika to say anything yet, so she moved on from that question. At least now, though, she had a better idea of why Rika may seem off.

She tried to draw connections between the three incidents that changed her friends and her, but none could be found. She had at first thought that it could be contributed to a single incident, but there was no way that the tattoo had anything to do with Rena not moving to Hinamizawa or Satoshi not killing his aunt, or even all the other ways around. From that, she came to the conclusion that they reasons behind each were one separate reason in someone's past that caused something to not happen, or perhaps just not happen rather than it being caused. The only thing related was Satoko and Satoshi because of their similar pasts.

Well, that was all she could draw from now. At least she had made some progress. Now, she knew that it had to do with separate incidents not occurring in the past. That was a start.

Something occurred to her then. What about Keiichi? He was no different, and his past seemed to be the same for all she knew. Did this just not apply to him? Or was there another incident in the past that was changed that hardly affected him?

She would probably never know.

Mion carefully put away the sheets of paper in her bag so that they did not get crunched up or wrinkled, and then she went back to sit on her futon. She had done enough thinking about her current situation for today, so her mind began to drift to random things, like the dinner she was hoping to have later that day. She usually didn't think about such trivial matters, but with nothing to do, she found it more entertaining than most options.

Well, maybe she could do something else. Like maybe take a stroll in the garden or something similar. _No. That sounds like a good idea. Let me go out._ She stood up from her futon and wandered over to the door, which she opened and then preceded to slide shut the moment she was out the door. She always felt a little uncomfortable anywhere in the Sonozaki family aside from her own room, knowing that there were people in the building that despised her. Sometimes, when members of the Sonozaki family were over, they would give her glares as they walked by. Her room was the only safe place, for the only people who went inside were her and her sister, who would never give her that type of hostile look.

It was odd, she thought. This house was her own, and it used to give a feeling of comfort. Now, it seemed cold.

That wasn't just it, she realized. It was her whole family. Never before had she truly seen her family in this light. She would always attempt to get a better understanding of it by putting her mind in Shion's shoes, but it never quite worked. She did have a good understanding from when she was a child, but now, as a teenager, those cold glares just seemed that much more chilling. Everything about her family in this world just seemed… different, and unlike what she had felt before. She was now truly understanding how her sister had felt all these years, and it was just that more painful.

Well, better her than her sister. It was much nicer to see her sister happier. She was truly a happy person in this world, being able to get along in life with her friends and without worry of her family. If that was the case, then she didn't mind those cold looks that everyone gave her. It was like she was taking the bullet for her sister, and that was something she felt proud and happy to do.

Luckily, no one was here today to give her those harsh looks, so she could walk down the hallway without a care. She didn't have to avoid those glares today. With a sigh, she wandered down the hallway and over to the front of the house.

But when she reached the front of the house, she was in for quite a surprise. Standing there was a servant at the front door, looking down upon a small figure that was standing in the open doorway. It was none other than Furude Rika, and she was looking up at the servant with a hopeful look in her eyes. In one hand, she held a stuffed cat, which she was grasping onto by its tiny, plush tail, the whole body dangling in the air.

"Mii is in a meeting?" she said, sounding disappointed.

"I'm afraid so. But she's going to be done in an hour or two, so why don't you come back then?" the servant suggested.

Rika looked sadly down at her cat, which she now positioned so that it was in both of her hands and so that the button eyes were pointing towards her face. "I'm sorry, Mr. Cat. We aren't going to get to play with Mii today…" she said apologetically, with disappointment in her own voice.

Something prompted Mion to speak up at that time, perhaps it was how cute the girl in front of her was. "Ah, Rika-chan?" she said, making her presence known.

Rika's head turned towards Mion, and a huge smile broke out across her face. "Shii!" she cried out, pushing by the servant and running up to the much larger girl. The toy kitten was once again put in one hand, and it was swinging back and forth as she grasped it tightly by the thin tail.

Mion looked down at the young girl, smiling. "Hello, Rika-chan. Why are you here today?" she asked.

"Well, Mr. Cat and I wanted to go out and play with Mii. We would have come to play with you but we did not know that you were here. Mr. Cat said that he thought that Shii would be out in town." She looked down towards her stuffed cat, narrowing her eyes at it. "Bad Mr. Cat! You lied to me."

"Now, Mr. Cat didn't do anything wrong!" said Mion, deciding to play along. "He just said that he thought that I was out of town. He didn't know that I was out of town, it is just what he thought."

Rika looked down at the cat, unsure. "Oh?"

"Yes, so please forgive Mr. Cat," Mion said gently.

Rika held the cat back in her two arms, staring at it for a little bit. She didn't say anything for a moment, and her expression remained the same. It stayed that way until her face finally broke into a large smile. "Okay, I forgive Mr. Cat. I am just happy that Mr. Cat is wrong." She looked back up at the older girl, smiling. "Shii, are you doing anything right now?" she asked.

Mion shook her head.

"Then can Mr. Cat and I play with you?" she asked. She wore a very cute look on her face of hopefulness as she looked up at the teenager girl. She positioned the cat so that it was being held in her two arms and so that the small, black, button eyes were gazing at her straight in the face, if you were to ignore the fact that the buttons were very slightly crooked due to the strings attaching it to the face were coming a little loose.

Really, how could she say no to that face? Besides, she had nothing to do anyways. Hanging out with Rika would be a good way to spend her time. "Sure, I'll play with you!"

A huge grin broke out across Rika's face. "Yay!" she yelled out. She almost threw her arms out into the air, but she stopped when she realized that it would cause Mr. Cat to go flying across the room. She looked down at the cat, readjusting it so that it was less likely to fall out of her arms and so that it would be more comfortable had it been a real cat.

Mion gave the servant a look, telling her silently that she would take care of Rika. The servant simply nodded and went on her way, perhaps to tell Oryou that the Furude miko was staying over.

"All right then! Let's go."

Mion lead the young girl to her room. When she entered, Rika instantly began to look about the room. She was very curious as to what an older girl's room looked like, and she was not disappointed by what she saw. The whole room was very intriguing to her.

"Wow, it's so big. Mii and Shii both sleep here, right?" she asked.

"Yup. That's why there are two futons instead of just one!" she explained.

Rika looked about some more after nodding her head. Finally, she sat down on one of her the futons and settled down. She smiled as she happily placed her toy cat down on the futon, then turning its body around so that it was facing her.

"Mr. Cat, do you like Shii's room?" she asked the cat.

The plush animal, naturally, said nothing.

Rika looked up from the plush cat to Shion. "He likes your room," she told her.

Mion smiled. "I'm glad your cat likes my room. I like my room, too."

Rika then went back to her cat. She began to drag it across the futon, making it bounce up and down with every single step that it took. "Mr. Cat likes this futon. It is soft. But Mr. Cat is bored," she explained to Mion as she moved the cat around. Suddenly, she knocked the cat over with a slap of the palm. "Oops! Mr. Cat tripped." She looked up at Mion, a sad look on her face. "Mr. Cat is hurt. He can't move."  
>"Oh!" Mion gasped. Deciding to be friendly, she ran over to a small corner in her room, one with an old, dusty chest in it. She pried up the top of the chest and looked inside. The chest contained a bunch of dusty old toys the twins would play with when they were little that they for some reason didn't throw out. Mion mostly didn't have the heart to abandon the old toys, as they brought back good memories and it just seemed too sad to toss them out. It was like throwing away old memories. From the presence of it, Mion was sure that this world's Shion felt the same way. With a quick swipe, she pulled out a plush cat with a dark green ribbon tied around its neck.<p>

She placed the cat down next to the other cat. "Don't worry, Mr. Cat! Azumi is here to help!"

Rika gasped. "Oh!"

Mion moved her cat so that it was now touching the other cat. "See! She makes everything better. Now Mr. Cat is all better!"

"Yay!" cried Rika. "Mr. Cat is so happy! Mr. Cat gives Azumi a big hug!" She moved her cat and bended the paws in such a way that it looked like her toy cat was indeed giving Mion's cat a big hug. "He was in big trouble, but Azumi saved him, so now he is not!"

Mion cracked an evil smile. "Are you sure?" She turned towards the chest, and in a swift movement, she pulled out a toy dog. "Because the big, bad dog is here now!"

Rika gasped. "Oh no! Someone, save Mr. Cat!" she cried. "Mr. Cat is _terrified _of dogs!"

Mion put the dog down, then making her cat stand in front of the dog. "Don't worry, Azumi is here to prevent the bad dog from touching Mr. Cat! She is strong, so the big bad dog can't get by her. Mr. Cat is safe!" she declared.

"Yay! Take that, big bad dog!" cried Rika.

"But…" The green-haired girl reached for the dog and made it push into the cat, causing the cat to fall over on the futon. Rika gasped at this movement. "It looks like the big, mean dog is too strong after all!" she declared. "Someone else is going to have to stop the big bad dog from attacking both Mr. Cat and Azumi! I heard that two cats are better than one from someone, but is it true? Hm…"

Rika hesitated. She looked down at her plush cat, worried. "Mr. Cat is too scared! He can't stop the dog!"

"But he has to!" protested Mion, "otherwise the big bad dog will hurt both Mr. Cat _and _Azumi!"

"But he can't!" cried Rika. "See! He's trembling and shaking!" The blue-haired girl reached a hand out and made the cat shake as if it was in the middle of an earthquake. "He's about to cry, too! There is no way that Mr. Cat is going to help!"

Mion made the dog run into the cat again. "Rika, Mr. Cat has to very quickly! Azumi is about to get very hurt, and so will Mr. Cat! Two cats can take him down, so get Mr. Cat to face his fears and help out!"

Much to the older girl's surprise, Rika stood up. She ran across the room to the chest, and she began to fish around a little bit. Suddenly, she ran back with another cat in her hand, which she then placed down in front of the dog triumphantly. "There! Two cats are better than one! The big bad dog is gone, and now no one is hurt and Mr. Cat didn't have to stand up to the evil dog! Everything is happy again!"

Mion laughed. "Well, I guess that's one way to end it, huh?" she said, looking down at the trio of cats and the defeated dog. "I guess Ayumi decided to jump in at the last second."

It was refreshing to play with Rika like this. It reminded her of the many times that she would play with her sister when they were little with these stuffed animals. In truth, the one stuffed animal that Rika had just grabbed was the one that was strictly named Shion's only and the one that Mion was playing was hers only, though they shared all of their other toys. It made a part of her wish that she was a child again. Rika was lucky to be so young and innocent like this.

Rika nodded. "Everything is saved! Yay!" she declared.

Mion reached over and picked up the two cats she owned and the dog, and then went over to the chest and put them away. She sat back down on the futon when that was done, observing Rika. She was currently holding the stuffed cat up to her face, petting and stroking its fur as she stared lovingly at it. As Mion watched, she noted that this kind of behavior just seemed kind of… different, from what she normally acted like. Sure, Rika was a cute girl who loved playing games, but this wasn't usually how she acted. Now that she thought about it, when she was playing with her, she was quite different too. She had always seemed different, but she could never put her finger on it, as evident by her attempts to make a diagram the other day.

It was odd, Mion thought. Her behavior changes had something to do with something not happening in her past, right? Well, if she were to figure that out, perhaps she could put her finger on just what was different. Then again, in order to do that, it was most likely that she needed to find out what the difference was first. She sighed. It was going to be complicated to figure this girl out.

Perhaps a little conversation would help.

"How are things at home, Rika?" Mion asked.

Rika looked up from the cat. "Mii, they are just fine. I am having a lot of fun these days," she told her.

Mion nodded. "Good to hear. Are the villagers treating you well?"

Rika paused for a moment, giving herself some time to think about the answer to that question. "Well, yes. Everyone has been very nice to me. I have been getting a lot of nice compliments and I'm very happy," she explained.

"Anything wrong?" she asked the girl.

Once again, the little girl had to pause and think about that for a little while. After a good while of thinking, she shook her head.

The older girl raised an eyebrow. "Nothing at all?"

She shook her head again. "No. I am happy."

Usually, Rika was troubled by something. She always appeared to be weighed down by what the villagers put on her and the matters around her, but that didn't seem to be the case here. She seemed very carefree in a sense, and now that Mion thought about it, much more childish than she usually acted. Sure, she put on this act of being child-like and was indeed like that quite a bit of the time, but it seemed to be even more than what she was usually. Of course, Rika always had this… dark, side to her that would come out every so often whenever she was put into a problem she thought she couldn't handle. Her tone would drop and she would gain this adult-like attitude that made Mion wonder if she was really seven years younger than her and not the other way around. This Rika here showed none of that at all.

Was that the difference between the two of them, then? Mion was pretty sure it was.

It could also be that Mion just hadn't seen that side of her come out yet, she wasn't sure. Well, that was always easy to figure out. She could ask her sister if she had ever seen a dark side of Rika come out, she could get the answer, and then she could conclude whether or not what she thought was right. She was pretty sure that it was, though, but the conformation couldn't hurt and would do her a lot of good. She couldn't afford to have any errors; otherwise it may lead to her messing up something major.

She gave Rika another look. She was currently playing with her cat by herself, making it bounce up and down on the futon while she called out sound effects.

_Yes, definitely different, _she concluded.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After Rika had left and when Shion had finished with her work, Mion found herself back in her room with her sister. The two of them were sitting on their futons, looking at each other. Shion had been explaining what had happened in the meeting. It seemed that no progress had been made on finding the murderer, even after the police had decided to investigate. It was very hard for them to find any clues without any evidence lying about. There were no fingerprints to go by, the blood seemed to belong to only the victim after going through testing and showed no signs of being mixed in with the murderer's blood, there were no objects left behind…

She did find out a little more that her sister hadn't told her yet, though. Apparently the murder had happened late at night in a section of Hinamizawa that Mion recognized as being mostly abandoned, as all it really had was a few old, messy houses that people had used to live in but had sense moved out of in favor of newer houses. The murderer was probably form Hinamizawa, then, but that barely narrowed down the possible culprits. Not only that, but she was told the murder happened a few days before she had fallen off the cliff, and the information had simply never spread to her.

"That's interesting. They're still looking for clues, then?" Mion asked.

Shion sighed. "But it's hard. The police can't find anything."

"I suppose they could look into his background and at a list of people who would want to murder him, then, and get clues from that," she said.

"I think that's one of the only options they have left, unless they happen to notice something they didn't before," Shion said.

Mion didn't know what to make of the matter. She had no idea who could murder her uncle, and any clues she had involved his background and events in the last few days he spent living, which could be different in this world. She wouldn't have any idea. Really, the only thing that she could do now was sit and wait for more information.

"Anyways," Mion said, deciding to change the subject. "Rika came over."

"I heard," Shion said, smiling. "I also heard that you two had a good time. Man, if only Batcha didn't make us have the meeting at that time. I kind of wish that I was there, too!" she complained.

Mion laughed at her sister's actions. "Well, we played with her stuffed cat and I brought out my old stuffed cat to play with her with. It was a lot of fun. You would have enjoyed it, Shion," she spoke. Mion did wish that Shion had been there. It would have been quite fun to play with her sister like how they would play when they were both still little girls. At times, she really missed those days.

"Darn! It sounds like I missed you two having a ton of fun! Rika's a blast to play with. She one time brought this plush turtle she had bought from this store in Okinomiya to school and tried scaring people by putting it on people's heads and on their desks while they weren't looking. It was hilarious!" she said, a slight look of nostalgia in her eyes. "You should have been there, Shion, you would have loved it."

Mion remembered a time where Rika did something similar, except with a snake she had made in a span of three minutes by rolling a lump of clay in between her hands before carving out a small mouth. It had been a lot of fun, and she remembered saying something similar to Shion when she had told her about the time that that had happened in the previous world. It was odd how they had weird connections like that.

"Rika's really a cheerful girl, isn't she?" Mion commented.

"Yes!" cried Shion. "She's the most cheerful girl I know."

"Ever once get depressed?" Mion asked.

Shion shook her head. "Well, she gets sad at times when she spills her lunch or something or another, but that's about it. She's never _depressed_ or anything like that."

"Does she ever get moments where she acts… unlike herself?" Mion asked.

Shion looked confused and somewhat surprised by the question. "Huh? No, why would happen? Rika's always just a cheerful young girl. There's nothing strange about her at all. You know how she is. That's an odd question, Shion…"

_It's just like I thought after all!_

Yes, in this world, Rika lacked that side of her that was dark. In this world, she was genuinely a cheerful child who didn't have a dark side of her at all. She was just purely that side of Rika that was sweet, cute, and cheerful. That was what was different about Rika.

But then again, what in her past could have changed it? When did she gain that dark personality, anyways, and why did she gain it?

Mion didn't know.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**So I didn't upload on Sunday as usual, but I did that on purpose. Let me tell you this: I had a lot of work to do on Sunday, and I was a little stressed about doing it along with this chapter. Then, I remembered something. Wednesday is a day we spend without classes. We're just spending the day focusing on the community and the people around us… or something like that. So there's going to be no homework Tuesday night. Why don't I do my work now and upload on Tuesday instead? And so I did. It worked a lot better that way. I got my work done and I was indeed able to get this chapter done on Tuesday. I want to try to get a chapter done on Thursday… that's when we have our band's concert, so I get home around eight or so. Sigh. But there's no homework then, either, so we'll see what happens. I will, as always, upload a chapter on Friday and Sunday.**

**I like writing Rika like this. Speaking of which, did you guys see the new Kira OVA? It was subbed today (or yesterday) so you can all watch it now. I loved it. So much. It was incredible. Perfect way to end the series. I also liked seeing young Rika, which is how I got to this topic. She's so cute. Her "Nipah" made me die of cuteness. I think you will all like it if you haven't seen it already. It's kind of sad, though. No new OVAs. I really want to see more of Higurashi… but I guess that's what I write fanfiction for, right? And speaking of children, we're going to have to join the lower school classes for lunch. Yeah, I don't know which class, but if I get one with little kids, it should be interesting talking to them. I sometimes don't know how to act around them, I guess you could say. If they are second graders I'll end up treating them like children and I wonder if they will take it well, or think I'm stupid for treating them like that. I know every time someone treated me like a little kid when I was around third grade, I got really annoyed at them. But now we're getting off topic. New OVA was great, watch it, you'll love it.**

**I hope to get a new chapter to you soon, and note we're in the stages of developing and showing the differences of character. This chapter was about Rika. I'm sure that's going to change soon, though, if my calculations are anything to go by. Perhaps after next chapter? Or maybe even next chapter…**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: What's up with my chapter titles these days?**


	10. Chapter 9: Pieces

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Study hall! We finally get one only because our concert was yesterday and there was no need for band practice. It went over pretty well, I think. The other band had like twenty songs that were like… five minutes each. They were really, really, really good though. It was actually kind of boring aside from when I was playing. Yeah, listening to music is cool. Just… boring, if that's all that you're doing. I started counting the number of people who had iPhones and iPads, because everyone was recording on them. I lost count. Really, there's not much to do when you're waiting. The concert was fun any how. **

**Oh, and just curiously, Does anyone know why paragraph scrunches happen? I'm adding this after proofreading my chapter on FF and fixing up the ones that I can find. I do my work on Microsoft Word but I proofread here on the document editor. It's beyond me how that happens, and they are almost impossible to fix when I notice them in word. It's very annoying. Also, does anyone know how to remove the spaces FF puts in between paragraphs when you paste them on a word document? The document I have of GED has spaces in between each paragraph in the whole fanfiction, and it's starting to annoy me because 1. It looks bad 2. I want to count how many pages it is, and I can't do that with the spaces in between each paragraph. Yes, I'm adding this here because Crimso's Corner was looking too long. And now this is too. Great.**

**Note: I'm still focusing here on the characters, so we're not at the parts you probably want to see yet. Don't worry; it's not going to be too long until we move on from the introduction.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Nine: Pieces_

Another day of school came and went. As usual, the children yet out cries of pure joy as they ran up from their seats and dashed out the door, some of them forgetting to push in their chair and some of them knocking into other children in the rush. The teacher simply sighed at such behavior, shook her head, and left the room along with the remainder of the younger children. The older kids didn't act nearly as excited about leaving as the younger ones, but they certainly were on the inside. Mion often labeled her days of work at school as a waste of time. She did, however, enjoy talking with the other students. That was really the only highlight Mion could find in school, and she was sure that the same thought was in everyone else's heads whenever they went to school. Really, who should spend their childhood doing a bunch of math problems when you could be enjoying your time playing with friends?

She sighed as she watched her friends walk out of the door. A part of her still told her that every day, after school, club activities would be waiting for her. However, that was no longer the case here. Such a club didn't exist. Sure, they were still good friends, but the lack of games and excitement made her quite sad. There just wasn't anything to look forward to after school without it. Well, maybe talking with her sister whenever she got her jobs with her grandmother done, but even then it wasn't nearly as exciting.

Mion slowly put away her stuff, and when she was done, she gave a quick glance to the locker that usually contained everything for club activities. Had it been her world, the locker would have been stuffed full of crazy outfits and games, and it would have been labeled a hazard to go near due to the sheer amount of items contained in it. Mion was really the only person who could open it without everything flooding out. How she did so was her own little secret.

She really did wish that she could get together and play games with her friends, just like in her own world. Okay, sure, playing with Keiichi that one time was pretty fun, but that wasn't enough. There weren't any punishment games and there just weren't enough people to make it seem the same. There were some good and bad about this world, she realized. She couldn't enjoy games like she could back in her own world, but people seemed a lot more happy with their lives in this world.

Well, whatever the case was, she was stuck. She had to be happy with what she had. Perhaps she would one day ask Keiichi to play with her again, and maybe ask Shion if she wanted to join in. Oh, Rika would probably enjoy it to considering how she acted in this world, and maybe Satoshi would like the games. He enjoyed them quite a bit when he was still present in her own world. Someday she would do so, maybe.

For now, she had to be concerned about fitting the final pieces of the puzzle together.

Mion slung her bag over her shoulder, like usual. _Might as well go home and lie down. Maybe I'll take a nap or something, there's nothing to do at this time of day._

Suddenly, Mion heard frantic footsteps. In a flash, Mion realized that Satoshi had suddenly appeared in the doorway. The blonde-haired boy whipped right by her and began frantically looking around the room, much to the girl's confusion. Why did he suddenly come back?

"Huh? Oh, Shion. Have you seen my math notebook? I was walking home and then I remembered Rika had hidden it during lunch, and I forgot to look…" he suddenly spoke out as he looked about the room.

"Oh! Sure!" Mion did remember Rika deciding to play a little game and hide Satoshi's notebook, and he had said that he was going to look for it after he ate his lunch. However, he never did get to finish his lunch until about thirty seconds before the teacher walked in to end lunch period, so his math notebook went unlooked for. Mion hadn't seen where Rika had placed it, so it could really be anywhere. Rika in her world was usually a good trickster when it came to things like this, so she was sure that she would have put it in a place that no one would ever suspect…

Satoshi frowned as he looked under his desk. "Huh, you don't think that Rika put it in her bag and forgot to give it back?" he asked.

"I don't think that she would hide it in her bag, for some reason," Mion said. "But if that's really the case, you won't know until you look everywhere…"

Satoshi seemed to take her advice and began to look through the rest of the room. He pulled open the drawers and looked in the bins containing art supplies, and when he found nothing, he went to the drawers that had some tools that would be used in math class, like rulers or protractors. That was too obvious of a place, Mion realized, as it wasn't there. Satoshi sighed as he walked over to the teacher's desk and began to rummage through the many things on the desk, while Mion went over to the tables at the back of the room, where a lot of the art projects were placed.

"Not here," Satoshi said. "Are you having any luck, Shion?"

Mion shook her head. "Knowing Rika, I think she would put it in a tricky spot."

Satoshi rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, but where, then? I looked everywhere in this room."

Something struck her when he spoke those words. "Maybe it's not in the room, then! She could have put it in the teacher's office or something like that," Mion suggested.

"Ah, you're right!"

The two friends wandered out of the classroom and down the hallway, to the teacher's office. They really shouldn't be there without a teacher, but it didn't matter in this case. She wouldn't find out anyways. They pulled open the door to the teacher's office, and after confirming that there was indeed no one inside, they went in and began to search about.

The office was very crammed, as it had to have enough space for Chie and her desk, as well as some other furniture needed, such as the many shelves that she needed to carry papers and textbooks that she may need for teaching. Mion reached up to the textbooks and began to look through them, as it would be a good spot to hide another book. It wasn't there though, as Mion discovered after a while of searching through the top shelf.

She sighed and looked over to Satoshi, who was going through the papers on Chie's desk. He shook his head upon realizing that the book was not there and decided to look underneath.

Where else was there to look in this room? He had already gone through all of her desk, which would be the most likely spot for something like a book to be hidden, and then the shelf with all the textbooks didn't seem to have it, either. She looked about. Really, those things were the only things in this whole room. There were stacks of paper lying about here and there, but no books as Mion could tell by a single glance. _Huh, I don't know…_

That's when a ridiculous idea popped into her head. The girl turned around and eyed the only remaining object in the room. Could it be…?

Mion opened it, and sure enough, there sat the book. She smiled widely as she reached out and took the book. The mystery was solved.

"Hey, Satoshi-kun! I found the book!" she cried out, waving the book back and forth frantically.

The boy turned around, and a delighted look plastered over his face when he spotted the book in the girl's hand. "Oh, thank you so much, Shion!" he cried out. He took the book from her outstretched hands and looked down at it, smiling. He opened it, flipped through the pages a little to confirm that it was indeed his math notebook, and then closed it when he confirmed that it was indeed the object that he had been looking for.

"Well, that's good," Satoshi said. "Now I don't have to worry about Chie yelling at me for not doing my homework again." He allowed the book to fall to his side along with one of his hands, and he smiled sweetly. "Yeah, I think I'll be okay now. Thanks again, Shion!"

"It's no problem. I'm just glad to help out!" Mion said. "It's not like it wasted any of my time or anything like that. I have nothing to do, anyways."

"Yeah, I'm still sorry, though. I really should have looked before…" Satoshi told her apologetically.

Mion laughed. "Haha! You don't have to be. And really, I don't think you would have found it anyways, even during lunch. Really…" she turned around. "…Who hides a book in the refrigerator?"

_~~~~X~~~~_

A few minutes later, the two friends found themselves in front of the school. Satoshi was standing there, kicking dirt with his shoe as he looked down at it and the swirl of dust that was created with each kick. Each time he tried to outdo the last, making a cloud of dirt bigger than the last. Mion wasn't sure what to say to him, and she had nowhere to be, so she simply stood there and watched. Eventually, it seemed that Satoshi got a little bored of the game, as the dust clouds created weren't getting any bigger at all.

"Hey, you said earlier that you didn't have anything to do, right?" Satoshi spoke. For some reason, his tone seemed to be a little troubled, though Mion had no clue as to why that would be.

"Yeah, that's right," Mion responded, sounding a little confused. "Why?"

"I really don't want to go home. There's nothing for me to do at home, either. I was going to do some shopping, but Satoko insisted on going by herself when I said that I needed to fetch my math notebook…" He kicked the dirt once last time before allowing his foot to remain at a standstill. "I think it would be nice if you were to stay with me, seeing as you don't have anything that you need to do, either…"

Mion was surprised at the sudden request. Well, why not? Hanging out with the boy would be a lot better than being alone at home by herself, for one. Satoshi wasn't usually the completely playful type and he was sometimes a little shy, but he was certainly fun to talk to and be around. It would be fun, Mion decided.

"Oh, sure! I'm fine with that. I really _don't _have anything to do back at home other than lie down on my futon or something boring like that," she replied.

Satoshi looked up from the ground and turned towards the girl, a thankful smile on his face. "Thanks, Shion. I really appreciate it."

Mion wasn't really sure what to say after that. What were they going to do, anyways? She didn't bring her cards today so that wasn't an option, and she wasn't sure that he would want to play cards anyways. They could always play another game around the garden area or run off into the forest. Actually, that was a good idea. They didn't even need to go off and play, but hanging around and just walking in the forest area would be nice. That area was generally peaceful and nice to be around.

"Let's go that way," Mion suggested as she pointed a finger towards the pathway that lead near the forest area. "I think we should talk a walk. It would be peaceful."

"That sounds good. I've been meaning to clear my head with a good walk…"

That decided, the two friends wandered down the dirty pathways of Hinamizawa, at first not saying very much to each other. Satoshi appeared to be in deep thought, so Mion decided not to bother him and think about her own matters. Aside from the different fact about Satoshi being present in this world, he seemed to be similar in personality to the Satoshi she knew back at her own Hinamizawa. She couldn't actually spot a single difference in his personality. This was similar to Keiichi, but Keiichi didn't even have a single difference, while Satoshi just had the fact that he was here.

The thing changed in his past that made it so that he was present at this time did not factor in with his personality. That was something she was now sure of. She was pretty sure it had to do with his aunt's death, so that would make sense. …Wait, if that didn't happen then, what did that mean for his aunt? She had considered it a few times but never really brought it up. It was always a little too odd to just bring up on the spot, and even right now it would be a little too odd to bring up the topic of his aunt. _I'll have to find out about that. But… I think that first, I should start up a normal conversation and see where it leads us._

"You know, this is my favorite time of year," Mion spoke up, choosing a random topic.

Satoshi looked towards her, surprised at the sudden conversation. "Huh? Oh… yeah, me too. These summer days are really hot, but at least they're pretty. It's much better than… say, winter. It snows too much here in the winter for me to enjoy it…"

"Ha! I like the winter, personally. Winter used to be one of the few times when I was with Onee," Mion spoke, casually bringing up the topic of her own past. She was hoping that such a thing would lead to Satoshi talking about his own. "Our birthday is in winter, you see. The Sonozaki family decided to be nice and allow us to see each other on our birthday. We would always enjoy that day by throwing snowballs at each other and having wars! Ha! That's why winter is special to me. I'd understand why you wouldn't like it, though."

Satoshi looked curious. "I knew that you lived in Okinomiya, but not that the Sonozaki family didn't let you two see each other…"

She nodded. "Yeah, it was pretty bad. They didn't like me because I was born second to the family, so they decided that they would keep me in Okinomiya without having any contact to my family. A few days before I moved here to Hinamizawa, I saw my sister for the first time in a year." She looked up at the sky above her, which was slowly fading into a gradient of pink and yellow. It was getting a bit late, though she found that she didn't care. She just needed to fit this piece of the puzzle in and she could be satisfied. "So, as you can see, our contact has been very limited.

"Wow," Satoshi said, amazed. "That's harsh…"

"It was harsh. But I can see Onee every day now, so it's nothing too bad anymore. I look back on the past and get upset at all the times we haven't been able to share together, but I can look forward to a better future now that I am living with her. It's not just our birthday we spend together now." She wasn't even sure that this all applied to her in this world, but it wasn't like Shion was going to bring up the topic with him. At least, she didn't think so. Well, she could always come up with an excuse later if she did.

"I could see why winter would be very special to you, then." He glanced to the side and watched as a buzzing cicada flew off the bark of a tree, flying right by his face as it went on its way. "But I like these mid-July days most of all. At least it's not boiling like in August here. It tends to cool down around this time, anyways, so I'm all good right now."

Mion was a little annoyed that the conversation happened to change like that. She would have to redirect it towards her past again, but she didn't want it to seem too unnatural and forced. "I like July, too. It's been getting hotter and hotter these days, hasn't it? But yes, at least it's not August yet…"

"The thought of the heat makes me cringe at times," Satoshi sighed.

"I know how that feels," she replied.

Mion was unsure that this conversation was going to get anywhere. In the direction that it was headed, they would probably end up talking about the weather the whole time and nothing else. She felt a little rude trying to barge into his life and past like she was trying to do, but she needed to know this puzzle piece in order to perhaps unlock the answer. She needed to find a way to shift the conversation to the subject that she wanted to know, but she wasn't sure how to do so. She supposed that, for now, she would just keep up with the conversation and hope it didn't turn into a conversation where all they did was comment on the weather and the area around them.

"Summer has some good memories, though," Mion pointed out. "I sometimes came over here to visit the Watanagashi festival whenever it came, and I would have quite a bit of fun with my sister whenever I went. Well, that doesn't mean I always went. I didn't go this year."

"Yeah, I was thinking that if you were there, I would have noticed," Satoshi responded. "I didn't see two Mions, just one. I'm kind of sad that you missed it, though. I think that it would have been fun to be at the festival with you. The more people you have, the funnier it usually gets. It was really fun this year, but it would have been even more fun had you been there! The year before that was the same. Really, each year the Watanagashi festival is a blast."

"I haven't ever had this many friends, so I don't know if that's true, but I bet it is! Being with you guys during the festival would have been a blast." Mion tried very hard not to slip. She did know that hanging out at the festival with a bunch of friends was a bundle of fun, but she couldn't say that now, as she hadn't really had any friends in this world aside from Shion. Whenever she went to the Watanagashi, it would always be in a group of people. Last Watanagashi, in her world, she had spent the time with the whole club and they had had a blast. The year before that was similar, too. She had gone with her club, which at the time consisted of herself, Rika, Rena, Satoko, and Satoshi.

Wait a moment. Satoshi didn't go to the festival the year before last. He was out killing his aunt. He had said a few moments ago that the year before last, he had gone to the Watanagashi festival. So, if he was there, then did that really mean that his aunt wasn't dead?

"How was the Watanagashi this year compared to the previous years?" she asked curiously, hoping it would answer her burning question.

Satoshi scratched the top of his head and didn't say anything for a good while, as he was in deep thought. When he finally did speak, he sounded a little unsure. "Hm… well, it was about the same as usual. Still fun, though. We always spend the time tasting all the food at the booth and just hang around. Rika usually insists on playing some of the activities, though, which we do do but they're a little too tough for me."

It did sound different from what the club usually did during the Watanagashi, though that was because the whole thing was set up to be a club activity. She ran the club, and since she wasn't in Hinamizawa in this world before, the club wasn't there and no one played the "Battle of the Evil Sevens" as she had dubbed the club activities last year, though the number tended to change. There had been seven students last year in the club. Herself, Rika, Rena, Satoko, Keiichi, Shion wasn't in the club at the time but she played anyways, and a girl named Hanyuu. She was apparently Rika's cousin who had come to Hinamizawa temporally, but she moved out a few weeks after. It was a larger number than the usual "Battle of the Evil Fives" or "Fours." It still sounded fun, however. Tasting the food at all the stands was also something they usually did, but most of the time in the form of a eating contest.

"…What about Satoko? What does she do?" she had to ask.

Satoshi looked down at his feet and watched as they slammed against the ground. "Well," he started up, sounding a little sorrowful, "I always try to get her to join in each year. I tell her that the games would be a blast if we all played together and that we would have a ton of fun hanging out and other things, but she always refuses. This year I practically dragged her over to the shooting gallery, but she refused to play with us. When we had left, I learned she went ahead and played a round by herself. She had gotten some candy she had eaten up immediately afterwards, as well as a few objects she decided to stuff in her room. So it's not like she doesn't like playing, it's just that she doesn't like being around us. She was more than happy to go off and play the shooting gallery on her own; she just refused because we were there at the time. She tends to do that a lot with other games, too. Not only that, but she did the same thing the year before. I know she tries to hide it, but she does enjoy those kinds of games. If only she would just play with all of us…"

Satoko did love games, as Mion knew from her world. Satoko was next to her on the list of the number of wins in the club activities, just barely beating out Rika. At least one part of her wasn't different. It didn't sound like how she was at the festival the year before last, though. It was then that she was been abused by her uncle and aunt and refused to have a lot of fun. If their aunt and uncle had been there at the time, then why didn't Satoko act all depressed? Were their aunt and uncle just never there in the first place?

"I love games, too. Maybe she can join me in a game sometime, if you manage to convince her. That would change her right away," Mion suggested.

Satoshi sighed. "Well, that's never going to happen. I know you would be able to get her out and near us if you had the chance to play with her, but she's just not going to play with you. Trust me, Shion…"

"I know. But if one day it happens, come to me," Mion said. "It seems like she just needs to be picked up a little!"

"I hope so."

Mion realized that they were at a good place right now. Perhaps she could ask him now? Well, she couldn't just go up and ask about his uncle and aunt, as she wouldn't even know that they could be living with their uncle and aunt in this world. So, instead, she decided that she would ask something else, something that would lead to the same answer but worded differently.

"But I don't get it. Why is Satoko like this?" she asked.

Satoshi shook his head. "I have no idea. You see, Satoko… she thinks that she's really strong, and she's right. Satoko is the kind of person that doesn't need to depend on anyone. She's independent and is highly capable of looking after herself. If I just left her in a random house with no food or water or anything for a few days, I would probably come back to find that she was perfectly fine. That's the kind of person she is. She doesn't need anyone to help her, and because of that, she thinks it applies to friends and having them or not. It's like she's trying to prove her strength or something," he answered. His gaze shifted towards the pink and yellow sky, focusing on it as if to ease the tension that was caused by talking about such a subject.

…That didn't sound like her at all. Satoko was never the type that could completely rely on herself. Back when her uncle and aunt were in Hinamizawa, she always clung onto her older brother and relied on him to protect her, and that was something that caused high levels of stress in both siblings. Every day she would cry for her older brother to protect her, and he would do so. When Satoshi left, she became a little better, but she was often reliant on her friends to help her out of sticky situations, be it big or small.

Wait a second. Satoshi killed his aunt because he wanted to end Satoko's suffering when her level of tolerance to the abuse grew too low and she was relying on him for every single thing. In this world, Satoko didn't have any suffering, judging by what Satoshi had just said, and there would have been no reason for him to kill his aunt. _I found the connection between the two of them! Now, I only have to confirm that the aunt and uncle aren't there, or that they are still there, and I'll have almost all the things that didn't occur! Then, I can find the parallel and work out my situation!_

"There's nothing that can drive her to depend on someone else? That's a little odd. Most children her age tend to rely a lot on the people around them," Mion commented.

He nodded. "Not a single piece of help is needed. I do stick up for her at times, like the time when your sister got a little too violent around her a few days ago, but that's about it."

"Really?" she said.

"Yeah, really. It's surprising, really. You know, for a girl that's gone through so much like her, I'd expect that she would rely a little more on me. She has a higher tolerance for the things going on around her than anyone would expect from someone her age," he responded.

There it was… she was getting so close to the answer. She just needed to keep this up.

"Has it really been that bad for you two?" Mion asked.

Satoshi nodded gravely. "It's been… terrible over the past few years. I don't think you know this, but my parents passed away on a trip one day. Satoko was there with them at the time, but she was off playing in the meadows somewhere else when it happened. Apparently, the railing was a little loose, and they leaned a little too far… and they fell down. The police officer found Satoko and told her what had happened, and then informed me shortly after. Then, our uncle and aunt came over to take care of us, but…" The boy looked down at the ground again, a look of pain on his face. "Ah… they… aren't nice people. They abuse us daily, and you would think that Satoko would fall under the pressure, but she's actually good at putting up with them. I… kind of wish that I had that kind of power. I know it's a little lame that the older brother is weaker than the little sister, but I guess I'm not that kind of person." There was a look of sorrow combined with a tad of frustration on his face, and it remained pointed at the ground.

"And your uncle and aunt are still here…?" Mion said.

"Yeah."

There it was. That was the information she had needed. Now, everything was confirmed. Satoko's independence and the fact that she did not need Satoshi to protect her caused Satoshi to not murder his aunt, and thus, both of them were still there. That was the difference in their past.

And yet, at the same time, Mion felt a little empty knowing that those two people were still there, like there was a problem left unsolved. She knew just how much they hurt the two of them, and just how much of a horrible person they both were. It seemed that Satoko was fairing better, but… judging by the look on Satoshi's face, he didn't seem to feel the same way. Mion could understand why. He must feel a little lame for not being as strong as his sister in this world, though he seemed to be better than he was in the real world.

"…That's horrible. You should call child abuse on them…" Mion whispered.

"I… tried. But they made me say that everything was okay…" he said. "So if I were to call them again and if they were to do the same thing, then… well, the result wouldn't be different… so it's pretty much hopeless." He looked up at the sky, attempting to distract himself. "But it's okay, you know. Satoko can put up with them… and I'm fine… even if I'm not as strong as she can be, I'm fine. I can hang in there. It's not like they're going to kill us… they need us to do their chores."

Satoshi sounded horribly broken, like he was trying to convince himself of the words that he was speaking. Mion knew that what he was saying wasn't the truth, and that on the inside, he was much more badly hurt than he seemed.

"Don't lie, Satoshi-kun. Those people are hurting you, aren't they?" she said.

He shook his head. "No… it's okay. I can deal with them."

Mion doubted it. She really hated how he was trying to convince himself that he was just fine, when it was clear that he was suffering. Perhaps he knew deep down inside that he was just feeding himself lies to make himself feel better, but Mion knew that that was when it hurt the most. If he continued to do this, it wouldn't mean very much good for him. Perhaps it would even lead to him murdering his aunt and the whole scenario with his disappearance happening again!

"Listen, Satoshi-kun. Don't lie to yourself!" she cried out. She stopped in her tracks, causing the boy to do the same as he turned towards her. "You don't need to tell yourself that you're okay! Just call the child services in secret or something like that, and they'll get rid of them for you! Look, you can't live with abusive relatives forever. One day, no matter how strong Satoko looks, or how strong you an act, they will break you forever! If you call the services, can fix everything very quickly! Don't do this to yourself!"

Satoshi just smiled weakly at her. He walked over to where she was standing, and then looked into her eyes. Mion felt one of his hands reach out towards her head, and then begin petting her gently on her head, going through locks of green hair with his fingers.

"I'm fine, Shion. But thank you for being worried for me…" he told her gently. "I really appreciate it. You're a really nice person… you're one of my best friends."

He drew his hand back, and then shot her a more genuine smile. It reminded Mion of how Shion described him when she first met him, of how gently she said he patted her head, of how sweet and caring his smile was…

"Thanks, Satoshi-kun…" was the only thing that Mion found the words to say.

Satoshi looked back up at the sky, which was now completely painted by the colors of the sunset. He let out a large sigh. "If I don't get back soon, my uncle and aunt are going to yell at me again, so it's best if I get going. But thank you once again, Shion. I really enjoyed talking with you." He smiled widely at her. "Can you talk to me again like this sometime? Maybe not about this subject matter, but about anything. If it's just to stop me from going home to my uncle and aunt, that's fine, but I really want to know you a little better. Besides, you never have anything to do after school, do you?"

Mion was surprised at the sudden request, but she found herself shaking her head anyways. "No, I never have anything to do…"

"Then can we to do this tomorrow, too?" he asked. "I mean, it's fine if you can't. It's a little selfish of me to ask that of you…" There was a slight look of guilt in his purple eyes, which caused Mion to react quite quickly.

"No!" Mion cried out. "I'd be glad to talk to you again! As you said, I have nothing to do after school, anyways! We can do this as often as you want!"

A soft, warm smile broke out across his face. He turned back towards her, and once again allowed his warm hand to touch the top of Mion's head, ruffling her green locks gently. "Thank you so much, Mion. It means a lot to me, really." He looked down directly into her green eyes with her purple ones, genuine happiness and a hint of affection in them. "I'm so glad to have a friend like you."

Mion nodded. "Of course! I'd love to get to know you better. It's nothing, really."

"Well, it means a ton to me." He looked back up at the sky, and then back into the distance. "…I have to run. Meet me outside of the classroom tomorrow, okay?"

"Mhm! See ya, Satoshi-kun!"

"Yeah, bye, Shion!"

Mion stood there and watched as the boy ran off into the distance, his whole body eventually disappearing into the sunset. For a while, Mion just stood there, thinking about what had just happened. Perhaps, with this, she would be able to know this world's Satoshi a little better, and perhaps she would be able to make a close friend out of him.

She was fairing pretty well in this world, wasn't she?

This place really wasn't too bad, Mion decided.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**First update on a Saturday? I think so. I'm sorry I didn't upload yesterday. I usually update every Friday, but… I got distracted, and then I realized that I didn't have enough time to finish the chapter, and then I decided I would just write the rest on Saturday, and then I decided that I would upload on Sunday to make up for that (which I hope actually happens.) So I apologize. That aside, wasn't FF acting a little funny yesterday? No one could access their accounts and thus, no fanfictions were updated. Why is it that this website has those kinds of problems often? I remember when I was uploading the first chapters of GED, it would barely let you get into the update story thing and you would have to refresh and refresh and refresh just to upload one chapter… and then there were countless other errors. There was that one time in between the last three chapters of GED and the first three chapters of BFB where my FF was so slow I couldn't upload anything without having to wait an hour for it to load, but that was my computer, not FF. Not that I don't love this website. Really, I do.**

**Okay, so I hope to get the next chapter up tomorrow. However, there are a few things you should know. If it goes according to plan, the next chapter will be longer than the others. I don't know how much longer, but probably at least two thousand to three thousand words longer than normal. Don't be surprised if I don't upload tomorrow, and rather on Monday or Tuesday. I'm aiming for tomorrow, but if that doesn't happen, my target is Monday. I do hope I will not have to wait until Tuesday to upload, but you never know. Mondays are pretty much free for writing aside from homework, but I manage on Sundays, don't I? Things should change around the next chapter, but remember that a lot of this fanfiction is development. I can't just pull the darker chapters out of a magical hat without the build up first. That's why my fanfictions tend to be long, so I hope you can hang in there. Nothing would be good without build up.**

**I heard Mion and Shion's birthday is today, by the way, so here's a happy birthday to the two of them! How old would they be, now? Assuming they are seventeen in 1983, they would be… forty-six? If my terrible math is correct. Someone correct me if I happen to be wrong... math isn't my best subject this year. Wow. Happy forty-sixth birthday, Shion and Mion! According to Matsuri, their birthday is 2/11/66. That's a symbolic date, now isn't it? There are two elevens and sixes, and then the number two. I think it stands for the fact that they are twins and share their birthday. I know the VN says their birthday is in late summer, but everyone else's birthday is in summer, so I ignore that. Plus I like the symbolism in 2/11/66, and just the way it looks. Plus, it's a specified date rather than a vague one. So happy birthday again!**

**Thus ends my (annoying) rambling.**

**~Crimso**


	11. Chapter 10: Answers

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I really need a break from school. I don't remember the last time we had off. Okay, so we get off for two days in a week or two, but the same week we have to take a whole bunch of tests and yeah. Why is February such a busy month, despite being the most insignificant? Well, that's arguable. At least it's a leap year?**

**Note: I forgot to mention this in the last chapter, but it's about Satoko and Satoshi's past again. So the whole thing about her being able to stick up for herself would have meant that she wasn't stressed and she didn't push her parents off the cliff, but remember that Satoko did have enough strength to push them off in the first place, so it was highly possible that the railing could have fallen. It just so happened to in this world. I'd explain more, but… well, you'll see.**

**Note: I am literally just pulling random math stuff out of my short memory of what I have learned in math below. That being said, I hope I don't make any errors, though I doubt you will pay much attention to Keiichi's explanation on how to do math stuff…**

**Any other confusion involving what happens at the end of the chapter will be addressed in Crimso's Corner V.3. Please read on.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Ten: Answers_

Another boring day of school continued on, and Mion found herself staring at her math homework, with the usual confused expression painted across her face as she stared at the numbers written down on her sheet. To some, perhaps the jumble of numbers and letters was comprehensible, but to her it just looked like a confusing mess. How some people stared at a math sheet and made sense of it was something that the girl would never in her whole life understand. If she had to be honest with herself, the reason why it was so hard to comprehend was probably because she didn't pay enough attention and didn't even care in the first place. That seemed to go for any of her other subjects, but math was the most noticeable. She could write a fine science research report if she put some effort into it, but with the same amount of effort she could perhaps solve a single equation.

It wasn't that she was dumb; it was just that she didn't care. How could someone who came up with strategies like making almost unnoticeable marks on cards in order to defeat her opponent _and_ memorize them be dumb? If math were like a game, perhaps she would find it more interesting. But unfortunately, math was work and Mion didn't like work.

Mion tapped her pencil on the paper below her as she tried to make the least bit of sense out of it. She knew that Chie had told her how to solve equations like this in a simple method, but she could only remember harder ones and when she tried them, she seemed to get crazy answers like X equals ninety-seven point four recurring. When she tried to go back over the same problem, she would get the same answer. And when she went over it again, she would get a different one that was usually even more ridiculous than the first.

She looked at the equation before her that she could only describe as being scary. With a sigh, she began to do the equation in anyway that she could remember it being explained to her. Wait… was she supposed to figure out what X or Y was first in these equations? Grumbling, she began to jot down random things she thought had the slightest chance of being correct, though she knew that they probably weren't.

Upon looking at her answer, which was another combination of a ridiculous fraction and a high number that couldn't possibly have come from the equation she had been solving, she realized that she really did have no hope with this work. Mion once again began to tap her pencil on the desk, tapping it to the beat of a random tune she had come up with in her head as she continued to hit it against the desk. It obviously looked like she was killing time, but Chie was too focused on helping a pair of little boys with their science experiment to notice her.

Perhaps she could get away with not doing any work in class. Then again, she knew that Chie got rather upset whenever that happened, as she did expect to see the work she had done the next day…

Well, she had gotten used to how scary Chie could be to the point where it wasn't even shocking to hear her yell anymore. It had become a part of her daily school life, and to see her not do it became a little more frightening than her actually yelling.

She stretched and yawned. Hey, if Chie wasn't looking, then why shouldn't she take a nap? She had gotten away with it several times before in class. She could easily get away with it again, especially seeing how those two boys had quite a few issues that needed to be dealt with, and how that little girl sitting next to them looked very eager to get help on her math homework…

Shutting her eyes for a brief moment, she began to relax and think about whatever random thoughts that filled her head, like what she was going to cook later for dinner or the random things that she would end up talking with Satoshi about today. She had promised him that she would stay afterschool with him again, and the day after that she was going to do the same, and then the day after that, and the day after that… It was going to be interesting getting to know this Satoshi, and seeing if there truly was any difference between him and the other Satoshi aside from the obvious fact that he was still here. What would he want to talk about, anyways? She didn't think it would be very good to bring up the whole uncle and aunt matter, as well as the issues he was having with his little sister. She wanted it to be happy time, not something dark like how things were back at home for him.

Unfortunately for the girl, she was noticed. Not by Chie, though, but by Keiichi. She could hear the loud sigh he emitted when he spotted the girl doing nothing directly in her ear, and she could practically picture him shaking his head.

"Lazy about work, huh?" he commented. "For some reason, I'm not surprised."

Mion turned around and stuck her tongue out at him jokingly. "Should have noticed before."

He looked surprised. "I did!" he insisted "I just didn't say anything or pay attention to it to much! Something in my head told me it was typical you behavior, but I think I was probably think about your sister. You know, because you guys are identical twins."

Mion just laughed a little. It seemed just like him to do such a thing.

Keiichi scooted his chair over a little closer to her, and he began to look and scan through the problems on the paper. There was a smile on his face as he read the instructions, but that slowly twisted into a frown the further and further he went down the page, the more he stared at the kinds of problems she was doing and the answers she had gotten…

"What the heck, Shion! I learned this stuff a little more than a year ago, and you're a year older than me!" he cried out.

"Of course you did! This is a review unit!" she yelled out. She quickly pointed to the bold letters written at the corner of the sheet. "See? Review unit."

Keiichi stared at the top corner, which indeed mentioned that the packet was full of review. "Okay, I get your point, but if it's review you should definitely know it." He shook his head. "I guess that some people don't care, huh? Well, whatever the case is, listen to me." The boy reached for a pencil that had been sitting on his desk and he positioned it in front of Mion's paper. He flipped it around and then in a rush, erased all the work she had done for the first problem. One he had brushed away the strands left behind by the eraser, he began to explain.

"Look at these two equations. You see how they both have an X and a Y? Well, in order to get one of variables, you have to make it so that the other cancels each other out and then you take the remaining variable and you solve for…" Keiichi's words went on for longer, but truth be told, Mion had lost him at the word 'cancels' and it was only at those last few words where she had decided to stop listening.

"Are you listening to me, Shion?" Keiichi asked. Mion instantly broke out of her thoughts and turned to him, nodding. When she did so, he continued. "Anyways, as I was saying, in order to cancel the Ys here… well, how would you get three Y and five Y to cancel each other so they equal zero?"

"Uh… you multiply the top by three and the bottom by three?" she guessed.

"You have to get them to equal zero."

Mion looked puzzled.

"I'm sure I could solve that but I have no idea what language you are speaking right now," she admitted.

Keiichi ripped out a piece of paper from his book and copied down the problem written on the sheet. He pointed to the two numbers. "What is the lowest multiple of three and five?"

"Fifteen?" Mion said.

"So how would you get from fifteen to zero?"

"Subtract fifteen."

"So what do you do to get them to cancel?"

Mion looked down at her sheet of paper. "Oh." She grabbed for her pencil and quickly did what Keiichi had told her to do, being embarrassed that it hadn't occurred to her before. She knew that stuff. She had just forgotten it. Review units were like that, they made you forget all the stuff you learned and expect you to remember it years later.

"Okay, so solve for X."

Mion carefully went through the problem. She felt a little silly about it, but she was a little scared of making herself look stupid in front of Keiichi like she had done a little while before. The last thing she wanted was Keiichi thinking that she was some kind of idiot.

"There, perfect. Now substitute the X in one of the sentences for this answer and find Y…"

Mion did so, being very careful about what she did. When she was finished, she looked down at her work to find a completely logical answer.

"Oh."

Keiichi grinned at her. "See! That wasn't hard at all. It's very simple, I think the only issue here is that you just don't remember this since it was probably from a while ago. Here, the rest of this front side is the same thing," he said.

Mion turned towards the brown-haired boy. "Wow, Kei-chan! You can make even old me learn all these equations. I think I got the hang of it now. You're an even better teacher than Chie-sensei," she commented.

Keiichi grinned sheepishly. "Eh, well, I don't know if you could say that, but…"

"Oh come on, take a compliment when a girl gives you one!" cried Mion, slapping him playfully on the back and causing him to yelp very slightly. "I said that you were a good teacher, so just accept it and say 'Shion is right! I'm a good teacher indeed!' or something to that extent."

"Haha, okay! I'm a good teacher," Keiichi admitted.

Mion laughed at him. "You sure are! Hey, how about if you teach me next time? You know, like when I'm done with the front sheet here. I still need to know how to do all this stuff from the same unit, and then there's the whole section way in the back on all the geometry stuff…" she said teasingly.

He looked surprised. "Uh, well…"

"Come on, a girl's asking you to do her a favor! You can't say no!" she said in the most persuasive tone that she could come up with.

"Fine, but you also need to know how to do it on your own!" he said. "You're not going to get anywhere if you rely on me!"

"Oh, but you're a good teacher, remember?" Mion reminded him.

Keiichi opened his mouth to say something, but he ended up closing it, and when he did, it twisted into a smile. "Shion, you are the strangest person I have ever met."

"And is that a bad thing?" Mion asked.

"No!" he cried out at once, shaking his head in alarm. "No! Not at all. It's a cool thing, you know? I love having friends like you."

Mion couldn't help but grin at that comment.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After school, just as planned, Mion found herself strolling down the forest paths of Hinamizawa with Satoshi at her side. The two of them hadn't spoke much, but Mion could tell that the boy was grateful for her coming out here. It was a distraction from life, to prevent him from going home to a place where he would be beat for a little bit. She wondered if his uncle and aunt ever beat him for being late or did something equally as horrible, but she had never heard about that happening back in her own world when they were still there.

He was lost in thought. Mion wondered if he was thinking about his uncle and aunt, and all the stress around him. It was hard to tell, his bangs were mostly covering his eyes. As for Mion, she was a little worried. She didn't want him to be thinking about such a dark thing when they had come here specifically to prevent him from thinking about the darkness in his life. It was supposed to be a cheerful occasion.

"So, Satoshi-kun, how was lunch today?" she asked without thinking.

Satoshi looked up. "Oh, it was just fine. I usually just buy from the store these days since it's easier, but sometimes I have some food Satoko cooked. She's happy to give it to me if I enjoy her talent in cooking." His face twisted into a frown at the thought of his stubborn sister, but he quickly shook that off with a bright smile. "But yeah, lunch was good today. It was one of the more tolerable things today."

"Compared to what, math?" Mion said with a laugh.

He nodded. "Yeah, I've never been good at that subject, to be honest with you. It's a little hard for me to understand a few things, especially when it's written out in a textbook. I always work better when Chie directly tells me what to do, so it's a little tough. She's usually with the younger ones," he commented.

"I know what you mean. Kei-chan spent his whole time helping me with a bunch of review packets. They're easy to do, I just kind of forgot how to do them and never really cared in the first place." A beam of sunlight hit down on her, and she stretched her arms and relaxed. "You see, before I went here, I went to this all girl's boarding school that was called St. Lucia Academy. That place was awful. They insisted on all these 'proper' ways to act and the kids there were all stuck up. I didn't enjoy it one bit."

He looked at her curiously. "Wow, that doesn't sound fun at all," he commented when she had finished. "I wouldn't want to be in a school where the kids were like that, and not to mention the ways you had to act…"

"Yeah, it sucked. A lot," Mion replied. "But I finally got out of there by not doing my work and getting kicked out. I know it seems harsh, but to me, being in there is a even worse punishment!" She had to laugh at the end of that sentence. While it was partially faked, she was just doing it so that hopefully Satoshi would go and laugh along with her.

It worked, much to her delight, as Satoshi burst out into laughter. When he finally finished his fit, he smiled. "Well, yes, it must have been. I couldn't imagine being stuck in a place like that. I think that I would purposely try to fail out!"

"Haha, well, it wasn't quite on purpose, but yeah," Mion spoke.

"It wasn't?" he said, slightly surprised.

"Well, let's just say that I had a few emotional issues at the time and leave it at that," said Mion, not wanting to spoil the mood of the conversation. It was not time for her to bring up such unhappy things. That wasn't why they came out here, after all.

Satoshi looked a little surprised, but he didn't say anything about it.

"Anyways, I'm out of there now and this place is much better. I don't have to act all formal and sweet and stuff like that; I can just be who I am. Well, then again, it's not like I ever followed their rules of acting formal. I would just talk how I would usually talk and I suppose the teachers didn't like that," she said. Of course she didn't think this was true, she probably just spent her days acting depressed, but she decided to go for it just for the sake of conversation. It wasn't like Shion was going to bring up the matter on her own or anything, and if she did… well, there was always such thing as making excuses.

"I'm sure they didn't react well to that at all," commented Satoshi.

Mion shook her head. "They kept lecturing me. 'Be nicer Sonozaki-san, or else you will suffer punishment!' is what they said. Well, something along the lines of that, anyways. That school was crazy. I'm glad that I never have to go back there. I suppose my family just kind of gave up on giving me a fancy education after that, when they realized I wouldn't ever put much effort into my studies. Then again, me being sent there was mostly to isolate me from the family. They just settled that by having me stay in Okinomiya, but now they are allowing me to live here. So yeah, I much prefer this school. It's very laid back, I guess you could say."

He smiled gently. "Well, yes. We only have two teachers, so it's much quieter. I think I prefer it that way."

"Big schools suck, because there are a ton of people and half of them are jerks. No, I changed my mind. Make that pretty much all of them are jerks," Mion said. She remembered Shion telling her about all the people she had met when she was at St. Lucia academy in her world. There was this one girl who kept pestering her about how to act better and Shion always brushed her off with comments that would go completely against what that girl had just told her to do. Yes, she was sure at least this information was accurate, though she wasn't sure if they would bother her in the first place if she had been so quiet.

"I've always wanted to go to the big city… it would be nice. I don't know if I want to go to school there, though. I'm so used to this cozy little school that it would be a big change, most likely in a negative way. But I guess I can't be so sure." He looked up at the sky. "Yeah, I really want to go to the city. Just for a little while, you know?"

It sounded dangerously similar to something he had told her before he had disappeared. He had had plans to run away form Hinamizawa with the money he was making, but he had spent that on a bear for Satoko's birthday, which he never got to give to her. She couldn't be very sure about what he was meaning by this, though. In this world, he could have easily just not given her the present and run away, as his relationship with her wasn't too good because of how she acted. Besides, she would have never accepted the present. That aside, Satoko's birthday was on June the twenty-fourth, and it was in the middle of July right now. It had already passed. Maybe that meant he was still saving up? But was he as stressed in this world, with Satoko not relying on him?

It was complicated.

"Well, I like it here. The biggest city I've really been to is Okinomiya… I never really got to see the town near my school. I just kind of hung out around there and thought about ways I could escape," Mion replied. She too wanted to see the city someday. It sounded fascinating from what she had heard, but so did the rural village of Hinamizawa to some people. Perhaps it depended on how much you had already seen something. Something like a huge city was almost unimaginable to a country girl like her, but somewhere in the city, someone was probably dreaming about a little rural village. "But you know, some people in the city want to go to the country," she said in order to push the conversation a little."

"Aha! Well, they're not missing much," Satoshi commented.

"Maybe it would seem like a whole knew world to someone in the city, and that they really were missing quite a bit. You never know," she said.

"Well, that's a little hard to say. It's kind of hard to put myself in a city person's shoes… the only one I've ever met is Keiichi, and as you know, he rambles on about how much better this place is to the city. I don't understand him sometimes."

Mion was pretty sure that was because of the whole incident with the model gun, but she obviously didn't bring that up.

"Well, we'll never know. Maybe we'll get to see the grand city someday," replied Mion.

"I hope so…"

Silence followed after that. Mion kicked the dirt beneath her. She had spent a good amount of time conversing, and now that she had some time to think, she leapt at the opportunity. She went over several things in her head, including what she was going to do now. She had fit the puzzle pieces together mostly, but now she just needed a way to find answers. There were a few missing pieces, but that didn't make it impossible to see the picture the puzzle was creating. It was still comprehensible in a way, though with small chunks it was a little tough. She just needed to find those little pieces and finish the picture once and for all.

She needed to find a connection between the incidents. She knew that all of them revolved around something not happening in their past, but she didn't know the connection of what those things were. Okay, so the events weren't related in the sense that one set another off like a chain of dominos, but she was sure that the event that didn't happen in each person's past wasn't just some random event that was taken out of this world. Was there something similar about the tattoo incident and Satoko not clinging to Satoshi, or was there something similar about Rena not being here? And why then did Keiichi not have something that didn't happen to him?

Then there was the whole matter of why she was here in the first place. Mion was beginning to think that the fall had caused it somehow, as in both this world and the other; she had fallen off a cliff. Was it for this reason that she had survived the fall in the first place? The fall was probably the trigger event that brought her to this world… but why would the fall trigger that in the first place?

And how in the world was she going to get back to her own world? That was one of the biggest issues right now. She could fit in here, blend in here, but she knew that at some point, she had to return to her own world. She dearly missed it and she did not want to have to remain here forever, despite how much better it was in multiple aspects. As far as she knew, there was no way to figuring that out. Perhaps if she did the trigger event again, she would go back. No… if the trigger event was indeed her falling off the cliff, the last thing she wanted to risk was falling off of the cliff and splattering on the ground, dead for real this time.

There was no way a person like her could figure that out. Perhaps she was stuck in this world forever.

Mion gulped. She didn't want that. She didn't want to have to be stuck in this world forever. Even though she had grown used to it, she still longed to go back to her own world, where Satoko was the same as always and Rena was still there. Sure, Satoshi was gone, but he would come back someday, right? If the event that had triggered Rena to move to Hinamizawa in the first place hadn't happened, there was a low chance that it would happen at all. Satoshi, on the other hand, had a pretty good chance of coming back. Irie, the local doctor, was working on a cure for the disease he had contracted and he would possibly be back someday.

Rena… Well, Mion would never know.

Yes, she longed to go back to her old world. Sure, this was nice, but she truly did miss it. It felt more like home to her, while this world seemed strange and foreign, like it wasn't even her own village. And that, in a sense, was partially correct. It was still Hinamizawa… just a different kind of Hinamizawa.

Mion would need some help on this matter, but there was no one to ask. She turned towards Satoshi briefly, who seemed to have slipped into dark thoughts again judging by the look on his face.

"Satoshi?" she called.

He jumped and turned towards her.

"Do you believe in things like alternate universes?" she asked.

The strangeness of the question seemed to catch the boy off guard for a few moments, as a puzzled look plastered his face. He scratched his head as he tried thinking of way to answer such an odd, unexpected question. "Well, I've heard a little about the idea. It's another universe like this one, except with a few differences? Yeah. I mean, it _could _exist. It… it's not…" he paused for a moment. "Not something I've really thought about too much…"

She nodded. "Okay, so put yourself in this situation. Suppose that you wake up one day, and you are in a completely different world. You don't know how you got there and you don't know how to get out. What would you do?" she asked.

Satoshi didn't say anything for a while, as he was in deep thought. Mion waited a while, until he finally spoke up. "Well, I mean, there has to be a reason why you're there in the first place, I guess… so you could find out why you were there and then… um… try to reverse the effect?"

_I've already thought of that!_

"But why do you think that you would be sent there in the first place? And how?"

Satoshi scratched his head. "I suppose it would depend…"

"Okay, so what if you wake up one day after a terrible accident. Say… a truck or a car or something hit you. And then you wake up and find you're in a different world. What would you think then?" she asked.

"Well, I guess that the reason why I would be there is the truck… because I guess you can't survive that…" he replied.

"Why would you have been sent there, then?"  
>Satoshi blinked at her, very confused.<p>

"Shion, why are you asking me this?" he asked with a playful smile on his face, so not to be rude.

"It's for a book I'm writing," lied Mion. "It's going to be about this girl who falls off a cliff, and then she wakes up to find that her position in the world has been switched around, and then she finds out that all her friends are different, and then she tries to put the pieces together. And then…Oh, I can't say that, that's a spoiler. But you get the idea. I need a reason why she came into the world. I have the idea of the cliff being the trigger event… but… why?"

Satoshi looked up towards the sky again, gazing at the sky that was swiftly turning into a pink and yellow gradient. "Well, I guess that someone sent her there for some reason."

"Someone sent her there for… what reason?" Mion asked.

"Hm… maybe because she has to do something in that world. Like, they have to save the world or something."  
>Mion doubted that, but she supposed it didn't matter. She was getting some good ideas right now.<p>

"Okay… so who do you think would send her in the first place?" Mion asked.

Satoshi once again took a moment or two before responding to her question. "Well, I guess not just anyone could send someone to an alternate universe. It would have to be someone with the power to send someone to an alternate universe. I don't know... maybe... huh, maybe a superhero or a god or—"

_Wait… that's it! A god… Oyashiro!_ Mion knew it seemed ridiculous, but so did the idea of being sent to an alternate universe in a first place. If she had come here, then why couldn't Oyashiro have sent her? Well, maybe he didn't exist, but that was a whole different matter. Maybe, just maybe, if he did exist, then he could have sent her here!

"That's it, Satoshi-kun!" cried Mion so loud that it startled a nearby cicada.

He looked taken aback. "Huh—?"

"That's it! You're a genius! Uh…" she turned towards the sky. The pretty sunset colors were beginning to darken, indicating that night would be falling them soon. If she didn't return home soon, she was sure that her family would get mad and accuse her of things. Not only that, but now, she had something else she needed to do before she went home to the comfort of her futon. "I'm sorry Satoshi-kun, but it's getting really late. I need to go home, or else my family will get mad."

Satoshi looked up and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I think Uncle and Aunt will get really mad if I didn't return home soon…"

"Right! So we should both get going." She turned to him, smiling. "Thanks again, Satoshi-kun!"

He smiled. "No problem, and thank you, too!"

"Right, I have to run! See you!"

"See you!"

Mion turned towards the distance, her destination and idea in mind. She knew it could be considered very ridiculous, and that if it weren't true, it would be a little silly. But still… it was worth a try.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion dragged herself up the steps to the Furude Shrine, a worn look on her face. She had practically raced here, and having to heave herself up many gigantic steps wasn't exactly very fun for her. As she went, though, she wondered how effective this little experiment would be. What if it turned out to be completely useless, and it ended up only embarrassing herself? She looked around. No one was here at the moment. She could do this without having to worry about onlookers.

She stood in front of the great shrine, admiring it. The Furude Shrine was, at the name suggested, the shrine owned by the great Furude family, one of the Three Great Families of Hinamizawa, which also included the Kimiyoshi family and her own family. The Furude family's main job was to protect this shrine and Oyashiro-sama, the god that was said to rest at this shrine. If what she thought was true, if Oyashiro-sama had really sent her here, then she should be able to communicate with him here.

She wasn't a Furude, so she didn't know if Oyashiro-sama would respond. She heard rumors that Rika, the head of the Furude family, was connected to the great god and could easily talk to him. If this didn't work, then maybe she could ask Rika to communicate with him and see if he knew anything about her being brought here. She was trustworthy enough.

Mion took a deep breath as she looked at it. What should she do now? Should she just go right out and ask Oyashiro-sama for help, if he had indeed brought her here? She knelt down in front of the shrine, closing her eyes and directing her head and gaze downwards.

_Oyashiro-sama… if you do exist, then please come to answer my questions! I beg of you!_

She shut her eyes for a little while longer. She felt a little ridiculous standing there, waiting for a response from a god that may or may not even exist in the first place. If someone walked by and say her, she wouldn't know what to say. Nevertheless, Mion kept her eyes shut and stood there hoping for an answer, begging that the god would give her the reason why she was sent here, and perhaps a way to get out.

Silence. Mion peaked an eye open and looked before her, finding that the Furude Shrine was just as it was before, and that no great god or anything had appeared. She looked around, just for a sign of _anything._ She listened closely to the world around her, but all she could hear were the cries of the summer Higurashi cicadas.

She stood up and sighed. Yeah, this whole plan had been pretty ridiculous in the first place. Was she really expecting a god to come out and answer all of her questions? She brushed off her long, black skirt and turned around. What Satoshi had told her had given her quite a bit of ideas. If she worked from those ideas, perhaps she could find it. Still, though, she wouldn't have a way of getting back out. The only idea she had was to jump off a cliff, and in order to not risk her life, she knew that she wouldn't even bother doing that.

Mion stepped forward, a single foot touching the step before her. She was about to move her next foot to depart, when she was interrupted.

"Wait!" cried a faint voice. "Don't go!"

_Huh…?_

Mion's head turned around. Did she imagine it, or did someone just talk to her? She looked at the Furude Shrine for the sight of a figure or something, but no one was standing there. It was simply empty and bare, just like how it had been before.

She sighed again. Must have been her imagination. The girl turned back around and moved another foot down the step, ready to leave.

"No, really! Don't go! Come here!" the voice cried again.

Okay, that one definitely wasn't her imagination.

"Up here!"

Mion turned back around and walked towards the Furude Shrine, staring at it curiously. Had it been the shrine that talked? She knew that it was coming from the front of the shrine, but for some reason, she couldn't _see_ anyone.

"Oyashiro-sama… is that… you?" she asked. "Where are you?"

"Oh, whoops! You can't see me! I'll fix that. Hold on…"

There was a flash before her, and the next thing she knew, a figure had faded in. When she looked before her, however, at the figure, she did not get what she was expecting to see.

"Whoa, who are you?" she asked.

The spirit smiled. "I'm Oyashiro-sama! Just who you called for!"

Mion looked up at down at the figure of the spirit before her, and then finally met her eyes again. "No you're not, you're a nine-year-old girl! Oyashiro-sama is not—"

"That's just what I look like! I really am Oyashiro!" she protested.

Mion stared at the girl once again, observing her closely. In front of her was not the old, masculine god she had expected to see, but a young girl who couldn't be more than twelve years of age. She was dressed nicely in a sleek, red kimono that was sashed with yellow. Mion's gaze went over to her face. She had hair that was a mix somewhere between yellow and green that reached just a little ways down her shoulders, and her eyes were a darker version of the same color. Much to her surprise, on the right side of her head, the girl had a long, curly white horn that resembled that of a ram's. On the other side of her head, it looked as if she had once had a horn there, as there were small, white fragments visible, but it seemed to have broken right off.

Mion looked at the girl in disbelief.

"Are you a demon?" she asked, looking to the horn.

The spirit looked surprised. "Oh, please don't call me that! I'm not a demon!"

Mion pointed towards her horn "Then…?"

"Horns don't always mean demons, silly!" she smiled sweetly at the girl. "I'm not a demon, I promise you. I'm a goddess. I'm Oyashiro, even though it doesn't look like it."

Well, she supposed that she wasn't a demon. Hanyuu had had horns, too, and she knew for a fact that Hanyuu wasn't one.

Mion really didn't know how to react to the situation before her. Well, she had been calling for Oyashiro-sama, so it wasn't like anyone else would have come. She was a spirit, too, so that added to it. Maybe they were wrong, maybe Oyashiro-sama did resemble a young girl and the ancestors told of her looking differently. She didn't have any evidence against it, but she was still at a loss for words. What exactly was she going to say now?

"…Are you really Oyashiro-sama?" she asked.

The goddess nodded. "If you don't believe me, then I'll show you some of my power!"

A part of her began to shudder when the goddess said those words. She knew that Oyashiro-sama's powers consisted of cursing and killing people, judging by the legends, so the last thing that she wanted to do was to see that happen.

"No, it's fine! I believe you!"

Oyashiro smiled. "Good!"

Mion was silent after that. Where was she going to begin? She would have to start about by explaining her situation to her, and then she would have to ask questions. She wasn't sure if the goddess would actually know why she was here in the first place, but it was worth a shot, wasn't it?

"I guess you're wondering why you're in this world?" asked Oyashiro so suddenly that it startled the girl.

"Huh… yeah…" were the only words that Mion could get out of her mouth.

The goddess smiled. "I'm pretty sure you came here because you figured out that I was the one that sent you here, right?"

"Well I—… yes," Mion said.

She nodded. "That's what I thought. Well, I guess you can sort of say that I saved your life." Mion's face turned into one of confusion, but before she could say anything, the goddess continued. "As you know, on that day in your own world, you fell off a cliff while playing a game of tag with your friends. When you were falling, I knew that you would die the moment you hit the ground. So in order to save you, I moved your soul to the body of this Mion here, who had also died. If I hadn't done that, there would have been no more life for you. It would have been over."

So she was right, then? She really had died back there? Mion didn't know what to say. Did that mean that she had no chance of going back?

"What about things in my world? What happened after?" Mion asked.

Oyashiro, who had previously looked quite happy, suddenly turned grave and frowned. She turned around and looked to the shrine. "It's not a pretty sight." The goddess clapped her hands together, and a white orb of light began to emit from her closed hands. Suddenly, the light burst out, and the whole world turned completely into the light as Mion shut her eyes tightly.

A few moments later, the goddess spoke.

"You can open your eyes now… if you really want to see."

Mion slowly opened her green eyes, and what was before here was certainly not a pretty sight. It was her, or rather, her dead body. She had suffered a great blow, as she had fallen on her stomach. Her whole body, however, had been flipped over, and revealed her shocked, lifeless eyes. Teeth had fallen out of her mouth from the impact, though some remains of teeth remained, with sharp points sticking out of her gums. Her nose seemed to have broken upon impact, with blood flowing out like never before. Her limbs were broken and contorted in ways that no living human could manage, and her whole stomach was coated in a thick layer of blood. It appeared that the impact, along with breaking her limbs, had broken several ribs. Her head was smashed on the ground, with thick, red blood leaking from her skull, which had, perhaps luckily, received less impact than the rest of her body.

She looked over, and saw the figures of her friends staring at the mess of her body with a look of shock and disbelief on their faces. Satoko was clinging tightly to Shion, tears rolling down her shock-painted face. Shion was not much better, she looked completely stunned and the amount of tears rolling down her face rivaled Satoko's. Rika had a dark expression on her face from what Mion could tell, but it was a little hard as her face was pointed towards the ground. Keiichi was bent down in front of the body, a look of frustration on his face as tears rolled off his cheeks. Rena was standing near the back, not wanting to look at the horrible remains of her friend. It would be too painful, and she was already sobbing as it was.

"As you can see, you didn't make it," Oyashiro said. "Or rather, your body didn't make it. I saved your spirit by bring you into this world."

Mion looked slowly towards the goddess, a look of disbelief on her face.

"…Then… if my body is dead… then can I come back… or…?"

The goddess sighed. "I think it's impossible."

Those were the exact words that Mion didn't want to hear. She did not want to be told that this was it, that she had to be stuck in this world. "But there has to be some way!" she protested. "I mean, if you're really Oyashiro, I'm sure that you could figure out a way to bring me back to my world! Don't you have the power to revive and fix someone's body?"

"No," she responded. "It's a little complicated. You see, my power is—… Oh, hold on, this isn't the right place to talk."

Oyashiro clapped her hands together again, and the bright light came again. Mion shut her eyes instantly, and after a few moments, when she felt that the light had come and faded, she opened them, revealing that she was now back at the front of the Furude Shrine. Upon looking around, she realized it was still sunset.

"Okay, so as I was saying. You see, I am Oyashiro, as I already told you. Or, rather, I'm one of the three gods in this village, so one of the three beings that have been combined into one by legend and called Oyashiro by the villagers." She paused for a moment to make sure that Mion had managed to take the information in. "I guess that one of the things that made you a little suspicions of my identity was that Oyashiro was, and still is, commonly associated with the Furude family, right?"

Mion hadn't thought about that, but it was probably one of the reasons why in the back of her head.

"Well, that's partially true. One of three of them is connected with the Furude family. She's the Oyashiro of the Furude family, you can say. The reason why I can talk to you is because I am not that Oyashiro," she explained.

The teenager looked a little puzzled. "So, you're…"

"The Oyashiro who is the ancestor of the Sonozaki family, yes. I know I don't look very old, but I'm your ancestor from hundreds of years ago. So, anyways, where was I? Oh, yes. That's it! You see, because I'm one of many, I currently share my powers with the Furude Oyashiro, so the things we can both do are… extremely limited," she continued.

This was a little confusing for Mion, who had suddenly just been presented with all this information that contradicted what she had heard in legends.

"Wait a second, what about the Kimiyoshi Oyashiro?" she asked.

"She died," Oyashiro answered.

Mion blinked. "Huh? How? I didn't think that gods could die."

"I don't know," replied Oyashiro.

Well, that was a little confusing. How did she not know how one of the other goddess had died? Mion blinked at the goddess before her. She really didn't know what to say to that.

"So that's a reason why we're missing a lot of our power, because we still share our powers with a goddess that's dead. We could easily get those powers, but…" Oyashiro looked down at the ground. "Well, the Furude Oyashiro has decided we shouldn't take the powers."

"Why?" was the only word Mion could say in response to that.  
>"I don't know, but it would be nice if I could get them." The goddess stretched out her limbs, though Mion wondered if there was really a need for a spirit like her to do so. "Well, the Furude Oyashiro is a really nasty one, so it's nothing surprising. Really, I consider myself one of the nicer versions."<p>

Mion was again at a loss for words. So, because of that, there was really no way that she could go back to her own world? Mion felt broken on the inside. Sure, this world was nice, but she really needed to go back there! She looked at the goddess. _She really can't do anything to help me, now can she? _Mion sighed.

"So, what do I do?" Mion asked.

The goddess smiled, losing her serious and grim appearance at once and returning to one that one would expect to see on a person who looked her age. "I think that you should make the best of your situation! Learn how to enjoy this world. You could fix it up easily if you just put a little bit of effort into it. It'll be really fun if you make it that way. It could be just like your own world!" she paused for a moment. "…Except for maybe the twin tattoo swap, I don't think you can fix that. But still, being who you truly are isn't so bad! You've been enjoying it so far, haven't you? So that's what you have to do, learn how to make this world better and live here happily!"

Mion looked at her, and to her cheery face. Was that all she could do? Well, with an attitude like the one the goddess before her was giving, she was sure that it was entirely possible. If she could learn to make friends and perhaps patch Satoko up, and hope that someday Rena would return, then everything could work out perfectly. No… it may turn out even better than the world she had come from. It was like a fresh start.

"Okay!" Mion decided. "If I really can't go back, then I'll try to do my best with this situation!"

"That's the spirit!" Oyashiro cried. "And I'll be with you, just so you know, so if you have any questions, just ask me and I can give answers!"

Mion looked down at the young girl. She had a number of things that she wished to ask that she still hadn't, but what was she to ask her first? She should know the answer to anything at all. It would be rather helpful having her around. With her, perhaps the pieces of the puzzle could easily be put together and the picture would finally be complete.

"Okay, first of all, if you're one of three, do you happen to have a name other than Oyashiro? I mean, there has to be something the other goddesses called you," Mion asked the girl.

Oyashiro smiled. "My name is Rion. And I know you, you're Shion."

"I'm actually—" Mion started

"Called Mion," Rion finished. Mion looked surprised by her ability to do that, and the goddess just smiled. "I know, but you're Shion now, remember? Besides, it's who you truly are."

She brought up a good point. "Right, well, thank you, Rion! I'll try to make the best of this world!"

Rion smiled. "Good!"

Mion smiled right back. Even though she had learned it was probably impossible to go back to her own world, Rion had made a good point. Fixing up this world and blending in with it shouldn't be so hard, should it? She could easily learn how to enjoy this world and the people in it, and she could create a world almost identical to the one she was in before. Sure, the tattoo thing couldn't be fixed, but she was fine with that. Seeing her sister the way she was was satisfying for her. She didn't know how long it would take, and if her efforts would really work, but one thing was for sure. She would definitely try to make her the best of her situation.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**CONFUSION CLEAR UP TIME: OYASHIRO EDITION:**

**Okay, so yeah. That was sort of confusing. I wasn't going to explain it this chapter but I felt that it was needed to explain. Yes, this is a whole new take on Oyashiro, but it was never said against. Rion, as she said, is the Sonozaki version of Oyashiro and one of three. She shares her power with Hanyuu, as well as the Kimiyoshi goddess who is dead. Therefore, she doesn't have the kind of power needed to revive, and Hanyuu doesn't either. And no, Rion is not a long lost Sonozaki triplet. And no, she is not related to the Rion in GED. Yes, I do tend to reuse names, but it can't be avoided. Rion is a real name, by the way. It's unisex, so both boys and girls can be named Rion. Once again, it's different, it's odd, but it's my fanfiction and I'm sure you will see what I have planned with this. And there is one thing I must, abousutely make clear... *ahem*. _RION IS NOT A DEMON. _Okay? Horns do not mean demon. She is not a demon. She was not lying when she told Mion that. No demons are in WAN. Got it? Good!**

**Okay, so we've got a lot more questions in this chapter, I'm sure. Where am I going from here? What will Mion do? Is there really no way to go back? What will Rion do? Will she she be able to fix this world? Will she even try like she says? Well, obviously I can't say anything. I'm just happy with myself right now, because I finally got a chapter that's around the length that is usually expected from me (7,000+) but please don't think that just because this one is long, all the other ones will be just as long. No. These WAN chapters are shorter, WAN is shorter in general, yeah. If this disappoints you in any way at all… remember what's next. EOG. Hey, it's four times as long as the original! And the chapters are long again! So this is a breather, I guess you could say. It's easier on me, too. I know that I will have to get in the habit again with EOG, but…**

**I don't know if you can expect updates on Tuesdays now, but that is what I'm going to try to do from now on. Friday, Sunday, Tuesday. It may just be today because I didn't upload Sunday and Friday and went with Saturday instead, but I'm going to try to go with this from now on. Wish me luck! Tuesdays probably will work, as I don't have Math OR Spanish on Wednesdays and don't get very much homework because of that. And this is too long so it ends now.**

**~Crimso**


	12. Chapter 11: Growing Love

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**FOUR-DAY-LONG WEEKEND! Yeah! I've needed this for a while. I assure you I will update during this time period. I have a lot of time to do things. I'm not sure if it will be Tuesday like I promised, though. Actually, now that I think about it, most of the next week will be free. We're having testing during the three days we do have class so our teachers aren't allowed to assign us homework, even though all the testing is done at school. Plus, we get to skip classes for testing. How cool is that?**

**Note: Do keep in mind everything I've said about Rion from before as we read along. You'll get to learn a little more about this world as we go forwards in this fanfiction through Rion, and more about her and the legends of Oyashiro**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Eleven: Growing Love_

The very next morning, Mion nearly had to pry herself from her futon. She had been awake all night thinking about the many things she had heard the previous day, and about her current situation. Apparently, according to what the goddess named Rion had told her, there was no way for her to get back to her old world. Her body had died. Just thinking about the image of her contorted, dead body made Mion want to throw up, and at the same time made her sad, because she knew that the world she had left behind and the people she had left behind were suffering.

She had seen the looks on her friend's faces as they stared at her dead body. It was even more suffering to look at than her own dead body. Each and every one of her friends looked horrified, and to add to that, they were all sobbing. She wondered if the world was going on without her, and if it was, how everyone was doing. She wondered if Shion had taken over her position as the heiress and if she had taken over her job as class president. Maybe she was even leading the club now. She wondered how her family was doing now that she was dead. Had they been upset to know that their heiress had died? And how was the club doing? If Shion had really taken it over, were they still playing club games as usual, complete with the crazy punishment games?

Then, she wondered how her funeral had been. Had people cried for her when they say that she was dead? How did people take the news? What did people say at her funeral? Did they miss her? Thinking about all of this made her feel like a spirit of some sort, looking down on their friends.

_I'm already dead. But I have this new life now…_

Still, though, she missed her old world and friends. Maybe they weren't doing so well without her. Maybe the club had fallen into a state of depression, and maybe they weren't playing club games anymore. That was the last thing Mion wanted. She didn't want people to suffer because of her death! _I want to go back there. I want to let them know I'm not dead. But…_

"You can't think like that," a voice reminded her.

Mion turned around to look at Rion, who was standing there with a smile on her face.

"Remember what I told you? This is a new life. If you blend in, I'm sure you can make this world better than before!" Rion cried.

When she heard those words, Mion thought hard about what she had told her before. She said that there was no way to return to her old world, but that didn't matter. She could still make the best of this world and turn it around. It wasn't like her situation was too bad. Okay, so Rena is missing and Satoko is a jerk, but that's just about it. Maybe Rena would return one day, who knows? And who said that Satoko's heart has been locked forever? Perhaps if Mion really tried, she could break through the tight chains that locked her heart far away from the others. Then, perhaps she could start up the club again!

And even though the tattoo was irreversible, she could live as Shion. She had gotten used to being called her sister's name, anyways. All that was different was that she couldn't be the head anymore, and that a good portion of her family hated her. She was fine with that, though. When she looked at her sister, she could tell how satisfied she was with her situation, and how happy she was knowing that everyone in her family loved her. As long as she was happy, Mion didn't care. It was her sister's rightful place, anyways.

"Just think, what are the things you can do today?" Rion said. "You can start out on making this world more favorable."

Mion scratched her chin and thought about that for a good moment or two. She needed to figure out how to unlock Satoko's heart, and that would take a while, so she may as well start with something else and think about ideas on how to get her to join the group before. There was nothing she could do about bringing Rena to Hinamizawa. She just had to wait on that one and leave it up to chance.

"How about Keiichi?" suggested Rion.

Mion turned towards the goddess. "Huh? What about Keiichi?"

"You like him, don't you? You could ask him out on a date or something!" Rion suggested happily.

Mion was taken aback by the suggestion, and a look of horror painted over her face, silently saying that there was no way she would do something as daring as ask the boy she liked on a date.

Rion frowned. "Huh? Is there something wrong with that?" she asked.

"I can't just ask him like that!" protested Mion. "I barely know him in this world, anyways! Well, I know him, but he doesn't really know _me…_"

"Then why not talk a little more? Then you can ask him out," Rion pointed out. "Maybe you two will be deeply in love in a few weeks!"

As much as Mion was embarrassed to admit it, it would be nice if that were the case. She would love if Keiichi would return her feelings, but… that just wasn't how things worked. It's not like they were going to go from friends that had just met to lovers in a few weeks, not to mention lovers who were deeply in love. That was stretching it a little. Sure, she could work on a relationship, but it would probably take a good while until anything became of it.

Well, she could certainly start. But what was there to do? Mion sighed. She never really had a clue when it came to love, and what to do with it. The only thing that she truly knew was how it felt, and that she was in love with Keiichi. She didn't know how to act on it, or how to make him fall in love with her. Shion had given her advice back in her own world, but that was mostly her teasing her, and Mion doubted that her advice was trustworthy. And if it truly was trustworthy, then Mion would have no way of distinguishing it from Shion just messing with her head. Shion loved to make her sister get embarrassed, much to Mion's annoyance.

Mion sighed. Well, she would just go along with things right now. She didn't really have any rivals right now. Shion was clearly interested in Satoshi still, and while it was possible that Keiichi would develop a crush on Shion, she would quickly turn him down. Her rival was only really Rena, and Rena wasn't even here. Of course, it was possible that she could come, but it was low. She had time.

"But could it really turn into love?" she wondered out loud.

Rion smiled. "I'm sure it can."

Mion looked unsure. "But I don't know what to do. Should I just talk to him and hope it turns into something more?" she asked.

"I think that's how you do it. I'm not too sure myself, but I think he already likes you! You shouldn't worry about it. I assure you that it'll turn out right," Rion responded.

Mion sighed. She still didn't know what to do, but she had no other choice other than to just play along and hope that everything went okay. Maybe it would really turn into love. Perhaps he already did like her. Well, maybe not. That might be stretching it. The only reason why she liked him was because she already knew who he was from a previous world, but Keiichi had practically just met her. Perhaps, had he been the real Keiichi, he would have a crush on her.

She stood up. Well, whatever it was she was going to do, she was going to make this world better. That she was sure of.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion found herself looking over her math homework. Keiichi's help had really come in handy. The equations she had been dealing with were actually quite easy; she had just forgotten them from years before and had never even paid attention in the first place. Chie was a busy person and couldn't always get around to her, so she would often try to read out of a book, and those blocks of text just looked so boring to read…

She flipped over the pages of her review packet, doing the problems. This was a waste of her time, but for some reason, Mion wanted to do these.

Actually, it wasn't for some reason. Mion knew. She looked over at Keiichi, who was writing down the answers to the questions about the book he had just read. She knew it was girly and embarrassing, but she wanted to impress him with the answers to these equations. In her world, Keiichi would always get a little annoyed when she forgot something right away. Perhaps if she did these well, he would begin to notice her a little more.

_I don't know, is that really going to work? _Mion eyed Keiichi. It's not really impressive to do these problems correctly. Anyone could do it. Was this all really worth it?

Mion looked down at her sheet. Well, might as well try it and see what he said. She continued down her sheet, solving each and every problem and making sure they were indeed right. No, there were no flaws in this problem. There weren't any in the one below it, either. Oh, she had forgotten the negative sign on problem below, but that was about the extent of the errors she made.

Mion looked proudly down at her sheet. She had done all the problems, and it looked like there were no errors at all.

She turned to the boy on her right, and then leaned into his ear. "Kei-chan," she whispered. "Can you check my answers?"

The boy turned away from his paper and scooted his chair so that he was next to the girl. He then looked down at her paper, scanning over each problem and what she had written down with his eyes. When he had finished, a shocked look painted his face.

"These are all right," he whispered.

A look of pride washed over Mion's face. "See? I'm not an idiot! I can do math! Aren't you proud of me, Kei-chan!"

He nodded. "Yeah, of course I'm proud of you. I don't think I've ever seen you get so many problems right like this…"

There seemed to be something odd about his tone, though. He still seemed shocked… a little too shocked. It wasn't really like to wear such an expression on his face, and Mion found it a little funny that he would react that way to his friend, who never seemed to be able to do equations, got everything right on her math. "Huh, is there something wrong?" she had to ask.

He shook his head quickly after she had said those words. "Oh, huh? No, I was just thinking that it's a little bit odd…"  
>Mion blinked. "What's a little bit odd?"<p>

"I mean, I never expected, you, Shion, to be able to do all these problems. It just doesn't seem like you at all," he responded.

Something hit her at that moment. _Doesn't seem like me at all? Oh no! Is that a bad thing? Is that something I don't want? _Mion was unsure of what to do. She wanted Keiichi to like her, and impressing him with math was one way, but… she just wasn't sure if that was the response she wanted. She was just no good when it came to love and what she should do, so such a response was puzzling her. It didn't seem good, though. _Okay, that settles it! That's the last time I'm going to do my math right! It didn't get a good response out of him, and it wasted my time! …Er, was that a good response?_

"Aha! Well, I think it's a one time thing," Mion responded very quickly before she pushed the math sheet aside. "Anyways, I'm going to go to my science homework."

"But you still have more problems to do!" Keiichi responded, pointing to the sheet next to the one she had been doing that dealt with a different subject matter all together.

"Yeah, but I'm bored of math. Go do your Japanese homework," she ordered him, waving dismissively.

He chuckled. "Now that's a little more like the Shion I know," he relied before moving back to his desk and to his work.

Mion had managed to get a chuckle out of him, and she had to wonder if that was a good sign. Was she doing this right?

_Damn it, Sonozaki Mion! You can't be doing this! You're trying way too hard. I don't know if doing this is going to help you at all._

Really, what good had all of that done? Well, Chie would praise her for her work, but it was a waste of time. All she had done was lose hours she could spend spacing out and thinking about other things that were more important than math. And then, at the end of it all, he had chuckled when she was more like herself. So what did that mean? Should she just not try like she had been doing then and see what happened?  
>Mion sighed. She really needed advice on this right now. Mion looked around the room. She couldn't ask Satoshi, he was just like the Satoshi in her world that would just blush at the subject of love and go quiet, and she couldn't ask Rika or Satoko obviously. She usually talked to Shion or Rena about this type of thing, but Shion would definitely tease her about this and not leave her alone. That was what had happened back in her world, anyway. When she had first admitted that she had a crush on Keiichi, Shion spent every moment she got teasing her, much to the younger twin's embarrassment. This wouldn't be any different. Rena was usually the most reliable, but she wasn't here. She had to resort to other options for now.<p>

Well, there was only one clear option here. She would have to ask Shion, even if it meant years of teasing. She sighed. She would have to be ready for what was to come.

Mion buried her head into the desk. Now, she just had to wait until class was over.

"Not going to do anymore homework?" Rion asked.

_Definitely not. That math homework was torture._

Mion spent the rest of her class with her head on the desk, thinking about ways to work the situation she was in out. She never managed to make much progress, though; her head was quite a mess from the events that had happened before. Whenever the teacher would notice her, she would raise her head quickly and pretend to do her science homework, so she was able to get away from trouble for the day. The last thing she wanted was to be lectured for falling asleep in class _again._

When class was finally over, she got up and stretched. She had a lot of things to do now, but on top of her list was to talk to Shion about how to deal with her feelings for Keiichi. She knew that the older girl would never live it down, but it was worth it if she could get some sort of clue. Hopefully it wouldn't be completely full of teasing, and she would at least get some nice advice out of her. Shion wasn't totally trustworthy, but when she was, she gave some nice advice to her sister. She just couldn't remember too much about what she had told her.

Just as she was about to head home, though, her ears happened to pick up a nearby conversation.

"Man, what am I going to do now?" sighed Keiichi.

Rika looked at the boy. "Mii, poor Keiichi. He looks sad," she pointed out, staring up at him with those big, purple eyes of hers.

Keiichi looked down at her. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. I'm not really sad, though. I just kind of want to go home now…"

"Mii, is there some reason why you can't go home today?" Rika asked the much older boy.

"Yeah. My mom's out doing a bunch of things with her friends, so I have to run over and pick up a bunch of stuff for dinner tonight. She gave me this list, but…" Keiichi reached into his pocket and took out a list, staring at it with troubled eyes. "I know what this stuff is, it's just that I don't know where to get it. I'm not familiar with the stores. Do I have to go to a separate store to get the meat, or…?"  
>Rika reached up and patted the seated boy on the head gently, much like how she always did. "You poor boy… "<p>

"I know, I'm a poor boy…" he sighed.

For some reason, this seemed to spark Mion's interest. If Keiichi didn't know where the store is, and she did, then could she help him out? She looked over to Shion, who was packing her things up. She had plans to talk to her, but… She looked back to Keiichi. If she could spend some time helping him, it couldn't do anything bad to their relationship, right? Besides, she was always with Shion. She could easily ask Shion about what to do after she was done with Keiichi.

"What about Satoshi?" Rion reminded her.

"He already told me he couldn't come today, remember?" she whispered to the goddess.

"Oh, I remember now..." Rion said.

With nothing else to do, why not help out the boy? Mion stood up and walked over to where Keiichi and Rika were continuing their conversation, which consisted mostly of Keiichi rambling to Rika about how unfair it was that he had to find stores and do things that he couldn't be relied on, and Rika just telling him that she was sorry for him and that he was a poor boy.

"Couldn't you help me, Rika? You know things around here," Keiichi pointed out.

Rika smiled. "I would love to help sometime, but I must go home. I think that Mr. Cat and the rest are very bored without me and I do not want to keep them waiting. Not only that, but there are some important chores that I still need to do! Nipah!" she cried, shooting him the cutest smile that she could possibly do, which seemed to make this explanation acceptable.

Keiichi sighed. "Now what…"

"I could help you," Mion suggested.

Keiichi turned towards Mion. "Huh? You could?" he asked, hopefulness in his voice.

Mion nodded her head, smiling. "Yeah, I know the stores around here, and I'm sure I can tell you where to get all of this stuff." She reached out for the list, which Keiichi handed to her. When Mion read it, she realized that it really wasn't all that much. Really, they could just go to one store and buy everything. That cut a lot of the time Mion was expecting to spend with him. "I know where you can get all this stuff. It's really easy!"

"Really?" Keiichi asked again. "You really mean it?"

Mion nodded again.

"Thank you, Shion!" cried Keiichi with happiness and relief in his tone. "Though I feel a little silly, I've been here for longer than you, and I don't even know where these stores are."

"Silly, I've always lived in Okinomiya. I just transferred here recently, though," Mion pointed out. "It's really easy. You don't need to be ashamed, but after this, I expect you to know the store we're going to so that you can do it on your own!" she said with playfulness in her tone, so not to sound harsh.

Keiichi rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah. It's not going to happen again after this embarrassing episode…"

He then stood up from his chair and scooped up his bag, stuffing it full of his homework and folders. He then slung it over his shoulder, just like usual, and looked at Mion.

Mion grabbed her things as well and looked at the boy. She knew that this wasn't really a date, but for some reason, she felt as if it was. She was really just helping him, and it wasn't anything romantic, but it could certainly build up to that. …Right? Mion wasn't actually sure how it all worked, but she sure hoped it would lead to something romantic between to two of them. They weren't going to kiss during this time out or anything, but if it would help a little in the long run…

Shion noticed that the two of them were leaving, and she gave her sister an odd look. "Huh? Shion, are you doing something?"  
>Mion smiled at her sister. "Oh, Kei-chan and I were just going to go out to buy things at the store. He doesn't know where any of the stores are, so I figured I would help him out. I have nothing better to do, anyways."<p>

As soon as she heard this explanation, Shion smirked knowingly at her sister, causing Mion to blush and look away. She sure hoped that when she explained her feelings for Keiichi to her that she wouldn't act like she was now.

"Okay, I'll just leave you two lovebirds alone," Shion said. "Just don't get too romantic around each other, okay? There are a lot of people in Okinomiya and they don't tend to appreciate public displays of affection."

Keiichi looked surprised. "Mion! It's not like—"

"And if you do, don't go too far with it. Our family is still home, and I'm sure your father is doing work at his home. They'll notice if you—"

"_ONEE!_" Mion practically screeched. "Let's not go there!"

Shion giggled at how embarrassed her sister had gotten. It was pretty much her favorite hobby to get reactions like that out of her. "Aw, you know I was just kidding. Anyways, be sure to get home soon enough. I know the family will be very confused if you show up too late or if you skip dinner. You know how Batcha gets when you show up late or anything like that. Anyways…" She grabbed her bag and smiled at her sister. "I'm leaving. See you at home soon enough. Enjoy your date!"

Mion was going to protest about how she wasn't on a date, but Shion had already whisked by her and the only thing she managed to get out was a quick "goodbye" to her twin.

When Shion had left, Mion looked over to Keiichi, who was wearing a faint blush on his face. Mion thought it was a sign at first, but then she shook her head. _No, it's usually like that. People blush when someone makes a comment like that!  
><em>She had to stop looking so closely for that kind of stuff. Then, she'd just be misleading herself.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After the two of them had arrived in Okinomiya, they found themselves walking down the quite busy streets. A lot of people tended to be out at this time, much more than the amount of people that were there at other points in the day. It was because people usually tended to do last minute shopping for dinner around this time, or because people liked to go out for dinner around this time. Mion didn't have a problem with this, though. She had been to Okinomiya many times before during its busy hours, so she was used to it. She had to note, though, that it was the most amount of people she usually saw coming down one street.

Keiichi was used to it, of course. He had come from the city and usually saw streets busier than this at any point in the day. He seemed unfazed by the amount of people as he walked down the street, his body beside the green-haired girl's.

"So, Shion, do you know if we're going the right way?" Keiichi asked as he looked at the stores that lay in front of him. "I mean, all these stores seem to be toy stores and clothing stores and things like that, not food stores…"

Mion smiled. "You'll see. There are a lot of stores down this way, and there's this one particular store that has most things in it. I checked your shopping list and it seems that we can get everything there unless something happens to be sold out. Don't worry about it! I'm sure we'll be able to go back home in no time," she said, recalling how annoyed he was back in the classroom at the idea of having to wait before going straight home.

"Well, I'm going to trust you on that one! Hopefully I'll be in the comfort of my warm futon soon…"  
>Mion giggled. "Oh, I know that feeling. Sleeping is so much better than being at school, isn't it?" she said.<p>

"Of course you would say such a thing!" laughed Keiichi. "But yes, it's very true. I know I do well in school and put effort into my work, but that doesn't mean that I enjoy doing it. Tch! I'd rather be sleeping or something."

"Is this better than being at school, at least?" Mion asked the boy. "I mean, hanging out with me can't be _that_ bad, can it?"

Keiichi looked startled. "That's not what I meant! I meant I prefer the futon to doing errands. Not hanging out with you! I like hanging out with you. You're a good friend of mine, and its always nice being around my friend," he replied.

Mion couldn't help but blush a little at that comment. "Thanks, I enjoy being with you, too. It's always fun to be around friends. I'm glad I have you guys…"

"Me too," he replied.

Suddenly, Mion spotted the store she was looking for in the distance. A grin spread out across her face upon noticing it, and without thinking, she cried. "That's the store!"

He blinked at her. "Huh?"

"Yeah, that's it! Follow me, quickly!"

Again without thinking, Mion grabbed onto the boy's hand and tugged him forward as she broke out into a run. It took about a few seconds for her to realize that she was holding onto Keiichi's warm hand, and when she did, she nearly stopped right into her tracks as a tomato-red blush erupted across her face. She forced herself to keep going after it, but she could feel her heart beat fast in her chest just knowing she was touching the hand of the boy she liked.

_Damn it, Sonozaki Mion! Don't get all flustered over this one thing. It's just his hand… that's all. It's not like he's kissing you or anything like that!_

"S-Shion?" said Keiichi shakily as he tried to keep up with the girl.

Mion didn't respond. She didn't know what to say to justify grabbing his hand like that. Really, she just hadn't been thinking.

The two of them reached the store, and Mion allowed his hand to slip from hers. Just before doing so, she held onto it tighter, just for a brief period of time. It was so warm, and Mion wondered if she would ever hold his hand again. When it slipped away from hers, her hand suddenly became cold. She looked down and blushed, feeling like some kind of helpless little girl in love. But then again, wasn't that what she was? Still, though, she felt a little ridiculous. She shouldn't be blushing so easily like this!  
>She looked over slowly to the boy, who was blushing a little, too. Mion had to wonder, though, if she was just imagining that blush or if it was really there.<p>

"A-Anyway! Let's pick up these things and go inside. Where's your list?" she asked.

"H-Huh? Oh." Keiichi reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled up list, allowing himself to unfold it first and brush out the creases. "Right here. You can have it." He passed the list over to the girl, who gladly took it.

Mion read through it again. "Right, let's go in. It shouldn't take too long to get all of these things."

The two of them walked into the store. It wasn't too big a store, and was mostly cluttered with shelves and the various products on it, as well as the many people who tried to fit into the small building. Despite this, the store contained every kind of food in the world, or so it seemed. Mion didn't know what wasn't in this store. While her family's servants did all the shopping, she would sometimes come over here when she traded places with Shion when she still lived in Okinomiya. Every time she came here, they always had exactly what she needed.

"So, where do we start?" Keiichi asked.

Mion looked down at the list. "First thing's first. Let's pick up the vegetables. They're all bunched together over there." Mion paused to point in the direction of the refrigerated area, lined with vegetables and other kinds of foods. "And we can get some of the diary products while we're at it. They're all there." She paused again. How much money do you have, anyways?"

Keiichi shrugged. "Enough. My mom gave me some money on my way out and said that it would be more than enough to pay for everything, and since she goes shopping often, she should know the general prices of these kinds of foods."

"Good. Let's go."

Before moving to the aisle, Mion grabbed a shopping basket, which she then handed to Keiichi. The two friends then wandered down the many aisles until they reached the refrigerated section, where all the vegetables were being kept. Mion looked through the list and then to the vegetables. She placed the ones on the list into the basket that Keiichi was holding.

"This is heavy!" he cried.

"Oh come on, you're a man! You can take a few vegetables." Mion looked back down at the shopping list. "Right, we need to get some milk. It's just over here, so follow me."

Mion moved over to the other part of the refrigerated section, where all the drinks were being kept. She placed two large cartons of milk into the basket, which caused it to get a little heavier, much to Keiichi's dismay.

"Okay, that's good. I think all we need to do now is get the meat and we'll be done." She looked over to Keiichi, smiling. "See, wasn't that easy? All you have to do is go to this store right here and pick up whatever's on the list, and then you go up and pay for it."

"Yeah, I mean, I just didn't know where to go.." Keiichi replied.

"Well now you do!" she said to him with a grin on her face. "So now you can do errands whenever! Hey, maybe your mom will tell you to do this sort of thing more often!"

A horrified look painted Keiichi's face when he heard such a comment. "Wait, no! I don't want that!"

Mion giggled at him. "Ahah, just kidding. Anyways, let's pick up this meat and be out of here! Then you can go home and sleep or do whatever you have to do."

The two of them walked over to the counter. In front of them was a rather buff man who was leaning back in his chair, an annoyed look painting his face, his eyes kept shut. He seemed rather intimidating, to say the least. Mion looked behind him, and all the kinds of meat that were being kept refrigerated in the back. She looked back at the list for a brief second, and then went back to facing the cashier.

"Hello, we'd like to buy some beef," she told the shopkeeper.

The shop owner peaked an eye open. "How much meat?" he asked in his gruff tone.

Mion looked at the list. "Just one of the bundles you have back there. That should be enough," she said as she pointed to the already-wrapped beef being kept refrigerated in the back.

The storeowner nodded his head and got up reluctantly. He grabbed one of the already-wrapped bundles of meat at the back and plopped it down on the counter in front of the two teenagers.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Yeah." Mion turned to Keiichi, gesturing to the shopping basket he had. "Show him and pay."

Keiichi looked confused. "But isn't this where you buy the meat, and not where you check out?"

"Usually, that would be the case, but he's the only one who works here, so he manages both," Mion explained to the rather confused boy.

Keiichi nodded and placed his shopping basket in front of the man. He began to grab at the vegetables and the milk cartons, and when he was done writing down all the vegetables in the cash register and had finished scanning the milk cartons and meat pack, he placed them in separate plastic bags and put it in front of the two teenagers.

Mion looked at the price that appeared on the register and nudged Keiichi in the rib. She pointed to it, and Keiichi nodded his head. He reached deep inside his pockets and pulled out a load of shiny yen coins, spilling the contents out of his hand and onto the counter.

The man looked at them, counted them, and then snatched them up rather greedily. He handed back whatever change there was. Keiichi took the coins back and put them into his pocket.

"Thank you for shopping at Gorou's Store. Come again whenever."  
>Mion nodded her head. "Welcome." She then turned to the boy and handed him two plastic bags, and she took one for herself. "Come on, Kei-chan. Let's get back home."<p>

Keiichi looked down at the plastic bags. "Hey, why do I have to carry most of them?" he complained.

"'Cuz you're the one who needed to come here in the first place. Now let's get going. You really wanted to go home, didn't you?" the green-haired girl reminded him.

Keiichi took this as a valid excuse and didn't complain about it anymore. The two of them left the store, then beginning to walk back down the streets of Okinomiya. The sunlight was beginning to turn more orange and the sky was during pink and yellow with it, indicating that the day was soon to come to a close.

"Thanks, Shion," Keiichi said as he walked along.

Mion turned to him. "Huh?" she said.

"Thank you for this, I really mean it. I mean… if you hadn't come along, my mom would have gone insane! There would be no dinner for me, and I would be stuck with… instant ramen." He shuddered at the thought of the terrible-tasting and rather bland ramen noodles that he so often had to have whenever his mom got short on ingredients.

Mion smiled at him. "You're welcome. It was actually kind of fun, I have to admit." She blushed a little, hoping to herself that he wouldn't notice it. Just being with Keiichi in general was usually a great amount of fun.

"Yeah. I think it was because you were there. Otherwise, it would have been quite boring, even if I had figured out where to get meat from!" Keiichi said with large amounts of excitement and a slight chuckle. "I guess, though, the next time it happens I have to go alone. That's what you said, right?" he asked.

Mion nodded. "Yup! I only tagged along so that you would learn. Next time, you're on your own, Kei-chan!" she cried.

He sighed. "Oh well, I guess I at least know how to get here now. It was fun being with you, though."

Mion looked away from him so that he didn't notice that she was blushing again, though this time stronger than before. _Why am I acting like this? It's never this bad around Kei-chan!_

"Yeah. Well, maybe we can spend time together doing other things. Like, I don't know, we could have a rematch of Go Fish," she suggested.

He smiled. "Sounds good. When do you think we could do it?" he asked.

Mion shrugged. "I don't know, but at some point, we'll have a rematch. But you know what, Kei-chan? I'm going to win anyways, just like last time!" she declared. She knew this for a fact. He still hadn't figured out her strategy, and there was no way he was going to. She was just too good! Then again… he did in the other world, so why shouldn't he here? Mion shook that thought off. She had to be confident and believe in her skills.

His face twisted into a frown. "I don't think so, Sonozaki Shion! I'm going to win, and that's final!"

Mion laughed. "We'll see about that!"

"Well, anyways, I think we should be hurrying back. Mom is going to worry about me if I don't come home soon." He looked up at the sky, which was quickly changing into deeper shades of pink and yellow.

"Right! Let's get there quickly!" Mion replied.

Just as she was about to go, Mion was hit was a wave of shock as felt a warm sensation on her hand, and the next thing she knew, Keiichi was intertwining their fingers together in a tight lock. Mion slowly looked up at the boy, who looked equally as surprised that he had done such a thing. Now, unlike before, he was wearing a very noticeable blush on his face, and Mion was sure that a blush so strong couldn't be fake. She couldn't be imagining it this time!

"Um… sorry, I wasn't thinking," Keiichi relied awkwardly.

"No… it's okay," Mion whispered back.

The two of them allowed their hands to slip away from each other, and Mion looked away from the boy, finding it a little awkward to look at him after such an event. The two of them just stood there in silence for a good while, neither of them knowing how to react.

"A-Anyway, let's go," Mion said. "Your mom is waiting, remember?"  
>"Huh, oh yeah. We need to get to heading back," he reminded himself. "Yeah, Mom's going to worry. We should hurry."<p>

"Yeah," Mion replied.

Yet, neither of them moved. It was a rather strange moment for the both of them, with both wanting to move but neither of them deciding to make the first move.

Suddenly, Mion perked up. "Right then! Let's go! I'll race you!" she declared loudly before taking off without warning.

"Huh! Wait! You can't just do that!" cried Keiichi as he followed the girl into a sprint.

Mion laughed loudly. "Yes I can! You said to hurry, didn't you? So let's hurry back!" she yelled back to him.

Keiichi clenched his teeth, feeling quite annoyed that Mion had gotten the upper hand in the race. He then proceeded to break out into a run that rivaled the speed of Mion's, which she responded to by running faster.

As she ran, Mion thought about the events that had happened today. She had been acting so embarrassed today, hadn't she? Well, the two of them had gotten into a few situations where that reaction was appropriate... but still. Mion looked behind her shoulder at the boy who was gaining speed, about to pass her. Did he perhaps gain something from this little episode? Maybe his romantic feelings towards her grew stronger or appeared, or maybe it was just an uprgrate in friendship. Still, though, it didn't matter. Mion knew that this day had been well spent, and that was enough for her.

Perhaps one day, these moments between them would cause love to blossom.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Rion was more in the background of this chapter, which does seem odd but I was planning to add a little more of her in. I felt like this chapter was done, though, so I decided to cut it there and split it. So that's my explanation if that seemed a little odd to you. I mostly wanted this chapter to be about the growing relationship between this world's Mion and Keiichi, and it's the first somewhat fluffy chapter in this story. There will be more between them later, I assure you.**

**Okay, so I didn't update yesterday. Meh, I don't think you can trust my schedule anymore. Just expect me to update sometime on the weekend. Maybe you can expect me to update twice on the weekend, and maybe once on a weekday. I don't know, but I will update once every weekend AT LEAST. **

**I don't have much to say here. Look forward to the next update for me, okay?**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: What's a better chapter title? I just need to upload this chapter, so I came up with something bland randomly. Any ideas at all?**


	13. Chapter 12: Regrets

**Crimso's Notes V.2:**

**Tomorrow is the last day of the four-day break and it kind of makes me sad. It's going to feel odd being back at school. I don't know, I just don't like the feeling of coming back to school after a break, be it short or long. Yeah, I'm sure everyone feels that way. But the topic of school is depressing, so let's move on! …Uh, yeah, nothing to say. Let's get to the chapter.**

**Note: I'm sure that you realized this in the last chapter, but Rion is going to spend the fanfiction following Mion around, much like how Hanyuu followed Rika around during Kai and pretty much all her life.**

**Note: Okay, if you have read any of my fanfictions you should know this, but there is a difference between normal sisterly love and twincest. You'll never see such thing as twincest in my fanfiction. I'm sure you knowt his, but just keep that in mind while reading this chapter and any others in the future.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twelve: Regrets_

After returning home that day, and after Shion had finished her work late at night, Mion was bombarded with questions about how her little "date" went by her sister. During the time these questions were being asked, Mion found herself having to constantly remind her sister that she was not on a date with Keiichi, and that they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend. Of course, almost all of the questions Shion asked had to do with something romantic, like if the two of them had confessed their undeniable love for each other during the "date." They were now sitting in their room, fully dressed for sleeping that night as the moon shone through the windows, with both of them wearing identical night clothing and their hair laying loose, causing the two of them to look like mirror images without a single flaw.

"For the last time, we didn't confess our love or anything like that!" cried a flustered and angry Mion at her older sister. "Please don't ask something like that again!"

Shion just giggled at her sister's behavior. "Okay then. So if no words were exchanged, were actions exchanged? Like, I don't know, did you kiss him? Did you hug him? Did you—"

"No! Nothing of that sort. I'm telling you, Onee, Kei-chan and I just went to the store, bought a few things, and then we went right home! No confessions of love, no hugging, no kissing, no nothing! I told you everything there is to know already!"

Shion laughed again. "If you really do say so then, Shion."

Mion looked away and blushed. The little "date" she had gone on with Keiichi did not have anything romantic. The two of them _did_ hold hands… _twice…_ but that was about it. However, Mion had to wonder if something could grow from it. Maybe that pointless little trip to the store would help contribute to their love for each other, or rather Keiichi's love for her. She knew that she was in love with him and that trip did nothing more in confirming that. She had been well aware of her feelings for the boy for a long while now.

Though Mion sometimes had to wonder if she really was a fit for the boy. She had heard somewhere that boys liked girly girls better, and not a tomboy like her. Who would want to date a girl who acted as if she were a boy? If there was anyone, Mion was sure it wasn't Keiichi.

She wondered why this was affecting her so much. She had never been like this. At least, not before she had met Keiichi. She used to not care about love or that kind of thing. So why was she suddenly acting like this? Did the boy just have that big of an effect on her?

"Though, Onee…"

Mion wasn't sure if she wanted to tell her sister about her feelings for the boy. She knew that her sister would never live it down afterwards. However, if she had some advice to give to her, then Mion definitely wanted to hear it. She was in need of ideas of what to do with her feelings for the boy and how to make him feel the same way she did. If this was really going to be a perfect world, then she wanted to have Keiichi by her side. That was one way to make up for losing the world she was born in, the world that she still missed so much. Even if her sister were to tease her, Mion found that she didn't care. She just needed to let her feelings out and get some advice.

"Yes, what is it, Shion?" Shion asked, a curious look painting her face.

Mion looked away from Shion so that she could not see her reaction and blushed. She was nervous, but she went ahead and began to speak anyways. "I do… kind of sort of have a _crush_ on Kei-chan…"

Though Mion couldn't see how Shion reacted to such a confession, she was sure that her twin was currently smirking at her. She looked further away, not wanting to even catch a glance of Shion's reaction to the news.

"I knew it!" Shion cried. "Ahaha, see? I knew it all along. You don't have to hide that kind of thing from me, Shion. I can read you like a book!"

Mion looked into her lap and allowed her blush to intensify, saying nothing in response to that.

"I knew that you would like him," Shion said. "I'm actually… really glad, Shion. I knew that you would like him and I was right all along. He's just the kind of guy that you need to really patch you right back up, even though you've mostly done that yourself," she admitted.

Mion looked up at her sister, a shocked look on her face. She wasn't expecting her to say that of all things. She was expecting a boatload of teasing, perhaps a large, triumphant smirk, and several dirty comments about what she was going to do with Keiichi when she got together with him, and several dirty comments about what she _wanted_ to do to the boy.

Shion smiled softly. "You thought I was going to tease you, huh?" she responded.

Mion nodded.

"Well, yeah, I'm going to do that, but I just wanted to say that I'm happy for you, Shion. This village has been doing some good for you, and so has Kei-chan! I'm sure that when you two get together, you'll be fixed completely!" she cried,

_When we get together, huh? Try _if_ we get together. _"You know, Onee, I'm not sure if we're even going to get together in the first place. I mean… he's not going to want someone like me when there are other girls around here. I'm just not that kind of person, you know?" she responded, sounding a little broken.

Shion blinked at her sister. "What do you mean by other girls? Shion, look! It's just you and me. Who is Keiichi going to fall in love with? Rika? I know he's a pervert but he's definitely not a pedophile. Me? You know if he did I'd turn him down in a heartbeat. I—…" Shion stopped as her face flustered a little, and Mion instantly knew that the girl was thinking about Satoshi. "—Well, you know how things are with me. Anyway, there's no one else aside from you. Who said that you didn't have a chance?"  
>"But Onee, I'm just not someone to fall in love with! I mean, I'm kind of a tomboy, you know what I mean?" Mion responded. "I don't think that boys want that kind of girl. I always read about boys falling for the cute, girly girls, not the rough tomboys… I'm just not likeable."<p>

Much to Mion's surprise, Shion giggled just a little. "Oh Shion… you, not likeable? Of course not! Don't feed yourself thoughts you know aren't true. Of course you're likeable. Heck, if I were a boy, I would have snatched you up ages ago!" Shion said, partially joking. "But on a serious side, I think that Kei-chan likes you. He may not tell you he does, but he does. Sometimes he talks to me and says things like 'I'm glad that Shion moved here to Hinamizawa.' Not when you're around, of course. He really appreciates you, Shion."

"Are you sure that's not because I'm his friend?" Mion asked, very skeptical about the idea.

"Well, it very well could be, but I think that it's something else." She smiled at her sister warmly. "So please don't say things like you won't ever get Kei-chan. You will someday, and that's something that I'm sure of!"

Mion couldn't help but smile a little. This was the opposite of what she was expecting. Her sister's words, when they weren't just full of teasing, were some of the most helpful things Mion had ever heard. They would lift her sprits right up. And while Mion was still a little unsure about Keiichi's feelings or if the two of them were ever going to get together, Shion's words were certainly making her feel a little better about it. Maybe they would end up together someday. That would be wonderful.

"But Onee, how do I get him to like me back? Do I have to act a little more girly to grab his attention, or—"

"What did I just say?" Shion replied, not allowing her sister to finish her sentence. "I said that it doesn't matter, Keiichi will love you for who you are. Heck, you should never have to change for a boy! The perfect boy would be the one that would love you for who you are, not for who you pretend to be so that they would like you. And that's what true love is. So you don't have to do anything other than be yourself. Don't be so conscious about it all. Just live on and something will happen," she advised her sister, her voice persuasive and passionate, yet at the same time very gentle.

Mion smiled. Was that what she had to do, then? Would she just have to act like herself? That made sense. When she was doing out of character things like actually doing her math homework right, then she got something that seemed like a negative reaction out of Keiichi. But when she took him to the store and acted like herself, then she received a positive reaction. The same thing happened after she started acted more like herself after showing Keiichi the math work had happened. He had had a much more positive reaction to her true self.

So… if she just went along and not think about it, would she be able to end up with him? Is that all she needed to do?

"Just don't think about it and it'll happen. I'm sure of that," Shion replied.

Mion looked at her sister. Her sister sometimes didn't give trustworthy answers, but with one look into those happy, encouraging eyes, Mion knew that she could trust her sister.

"Onee, thank you…" she whispered. "Thank you so much."

"It's no problem," Shion responded. "Just let me know if anything comes up, okay? I want to hear about it! And I'll help you with whatever you need, okay?"

Mion nodded. "Of course I'll tell you! I think that with what you told me, I may make some good progress."  
>"Go for it!" Shion responded, giving her sister a thumbs up. "I'm sure that you can do it."<p>

Mion felt a lot better now. Her sister had given her some good advice, and Mion knew that it would help her out a lot. Perhaps with this, she may end up with Keiichi. Of course, she couldn't think about that too hard. Then, she might start acting out of character trying to get his attention and it might not do her any good. All she had to do now was not worry about it. It would get better.

"Thank you, Onee. Again, thank you so much. I…" Mion reached over and grabbed her sister somewhat roughly, pulling her into a tight hug. "Thank you… I don't know what I would do without a sister like you, Onee," she whispered.

Shion returned the embrace, holding onto her sister tightly. However, despite how tight her grip may have been, to Mion, it felt gentle and warm. "Yeah, I don't know what I would do without you, either. I know we've gone through so many hard times as twins, but I'm glad you were born. No matter what the Sonozaki family may have told you, Shion, you weren't a mistake… you were always meant to exist. We were supposed to be twins…"

Mion knew that the Sonozaki family had always seen her nothing more than a mistake. When she was very young and still known as Shion in her world, Oryou would yell at her and call her things like "a worthless copy" and "just a big mistake." It had always hurt. And while Mion hadn't heard such words in a while, she knew exactly how she felt, and for some reason, the pain of the words still lingered. Hearing her sister say that made her feel better, even if such a thing hadn't been on her mind.

"Yeah… thanks again, Onee… for everything…" she whispered back as she allowed herself to relax in her sister's embrace.

"You too, Shion, you too…" Shion whispered right back.

The two of them just sat there, holding each other tightly, allowing themselves to enjoy the warm of one another. Being close to each other was always a comfort for the twins, no matter what age they were. Whatever the situation, a long hug would always cheer them both right up. It was nice being so close to each other back when they were children, when the family tried so desperately to rip them apart…

And when they tore apart, Shion looked at her sister and smiled gently. "It's getting a little late. We should be going to bed," she said.

"Yeah," Mion said, a little disappointed that the embrace had ended. It had been very comforting. "I think so, too."

Mion walked over to the wall and flipped the light switch, allowing the room to go dark aside from the rays of silver moonlight shining through the window. However, even that was soon gone as Shion reached for the curtains and closed them, turning the room completely black. Mion lay down on top of her futon, enjoying the warmth that the sheets below her gave. She closed her eyes gently, allowing herself to begin falling into a deep sleep.

Yet, just a moment later, she peaked an eye open. Her sister was making quite a bit of noise as she dragged her futon closer to her sister, then placing it down right next to her own. She lay down on the futon and moved herself so that her body was right next to her sisters, and so that they were looking into each other's eyes.

Shion reached a hand out and pet Mion's head gently. "Don't worry about anything anymore. It's all going to be okay now, got it?"  
>Mion nodded and smiled. "Of course."<p>

"Good." Shion wrapped her arms around her sister and pulled herself close, resting her head right next to her sister's. Mion smiled gently at her sister, knowing that she was going an extra mile just to make sure that she was really okay. She knew how harsh Mion's life had been, and while Mion wasn't in this world for the time that she was depressed and spent her days doing nothing, she did find comfort in her sister's actions.

"Good night, Shion. Just remember what I told you…" she whispered.

"Yeah," Mion responded, closing her eyes tightly, relaxing in the embrace, and thanking her sister in her head once again for all that she was doing for her. "Good night…"

_~~~~X~~~~_

It was Sunday, and Mion once again found herself quite bored at home. She sighed as she lay back on her futon, remembering all that had happened the day before. She felt a lot better about her situation after last night. Shion's words always made her feel better when she wasn't just teasing, and Mion was very grateful for all that she had done for her. Everything just felt tens times better than before, and Mion found that it was much easier for her to enjoy relaxing on the futon for that reason.

"You seem a lot better!" Rion observed as she looked down upon the green-haired girl. "I think that Mion's talk really helped you out back there."

Mion sat up and looked at the goddess. "Yeah, it really did. That's why I'm glad to have a sister like her. She's always been there for me, no matter what the situation was. She would help me with something as major as being bullied by the family or something as small as me tripping over a rock and scraping my knee. It's always been that way. I'm glad to see that she's no different here," she replied, thankfulness in her voice as she pictured the face of her smiling sister.

"Wow, you're really lucky then," commented Rion as she sat down on the futon next to the girl. "I'm glad that you don't mind too much about her being you and you being her. I would have felt guilty about bringing you to this world, then…" There was a hint of worry on her face as she said that.

Mion shook her head quickly. "Of course not! You saved my life, so I'm glad you did that. I don't mind all of this, really. Even if I can't go back, I'm just happy that I'm still alive. You don't have to be worried." She looked at the goddess's face, which did look a little nervous and panicky.

"Oh, okay," Rion said with relief in her tone. "Well, I'm happy then! I was scared that you would yell at me, and I don't like it when people yell at me. It's a little scary!"

Mion laughed. "Yeah, it is." Even for a goddess who was even older than her, Mion had to note that Rion mostly acted as old as her appearance would suggest. "I'm guessing that a lot of people do that to you, seeing as you're Oyashiro and all."

"Yeah, people get all scary and demanding of me at times, and they yell whenever something goes wrong. I don't really cause all those scary curses, that's just something I and the Furude Oyashiro have been framed for," Rion replied.

Mion had long ago learned that the curse Oyashiro had been said to have caused was nothing like a curse at all. That was Oyashiro-sama's curse, the same curse that Rena had said to have met with in the past, which caused her to move to Hinamizawa in the first place. That curse claimed many other victims, and due to the strangeness of the pattern of one person dying and one disappearing on the Watanagashi every year, it was labeled a curse. All of it, however, was just a coincidence. Oyashiro had nothing to do in the matter.

It seemed likely that Rion would be a little scared of what people labeled her as, then. Of course it would be terrible to be blamed for so many murderers when you actually had nothing to do with it. It seemed that the name of Oyashiro had been stuck onto everything bad, when the three Oyashrios had nothing to do with it.

"I still have to wonder, though…" Mion said. "What exactly is different about this world? I mean, I know the differences, but what is the connection? What changed everything, Rion? Do you know that?"

Rion nodded. "I know everything about this world, for the most part. I know you've been looking for the answer to that question for a while…" she replied.

Mion seemed to sit up even straighter at the mention. She knew everything? She could tell her the missing puzzle pieces so that she could figure everything out about this world, and just what was different? Mion knew that after she learned that, she could settle down for good and blend in a little easier. "Could you tell me, then, Rion? About this world and how it's different, that is. All that you know."

"Of course! There are a few things I don't know, but they are minor and I'm sure they won't bother you too much. Anyways…"

Rion clapped her hands together, and just as before, light began to form in the closed palms of her hand. Slowly, they spread beyond her hands and began to grow and envelop the world, and right before it did so, Mion tightly shut her eyes so that the light didn't sting her eyes or anything like that. Judging by what she had done before when she made the light appear, Rion was probably showing her a vision of something.

Mion slowly opened her eyes, and before her was the image of a much younger version of her and her sister. She was standing right in the scene, though as a spirit that her younger self and her sister could not see, even if they tried. She couldn't even feel the ground below her, so it was unlikely she could even interact with anything around her at all.

"This world I've sent you to is a world where the greatest regret everyone has never happened," Rion explained to the green-haired girl as she looked at the young twins sitting in the grass. "Just this one change in someone's past has caused the world you are in to take shape and become what it is."

Mion turned towards the goddess, a look of shock on her face. Was that really it? A world where the greatest regret someone had didn't happen… Mion thought about it for just a moment. Just before she could really reach any conclusions, though, Rion interrupted her.

"As you know already, in this world, the tattoo incident which you dreaded so much never happened," Rion began to explain. She pointed to the two young twins. "Do you remember this day, Shion?"

Mion nodded as she looked at the figures of her sister and her younger self. The two of them were seated in front of the Sonozaki Manor's koi pond. Her face was painted with tears as she looked down into the pond, and her sister was looking at her with pain in her eyes. The two of them weren't exchanging any words, but small sobs could be heard coming from her younger self every once in a while.

"This is the day where everything went wrong," Mion replied. "It's the day and moment where Shion and I decided to swap places, and then I was taken and tattooed against my will. My family thought I was Mion, but I wasn't…" She sighed as she looked down on the figures close to her. "And then we swapped names and places forever."

Rion nodded. "This is that scene, except for the fact that here, you two decide not to swap places. Just that decision was enough to change the course of time and your fate forever."

Mion felt a lump grow in her throat. Just a small thing like that had changed, and that was enough to cause everything to be different. Had she just decided not to swap on that day, she would have just continued to be Shion. And that was exactly what had happened in this world, they had decided not to go through with the twin swap, and they stuck with their old names and things continued on as they always had been, without a single change or a twist of fate.

"This was changed because you regret the tattoo incident. Both you and your sister do, actually. It's both of your greatest regrets. And here, in this world, that regret has been done away with," Rion explained.

Before Mion could respond, Rion clapped her hands together again, and light began to form. Mion shut her eyes as the light enveloped everything around her, and when she opened them again, she found that she was in a completely different spot. She was now inside a house that she didn't quite recognize, but upon looking around, she instantly realized whose house this was. Behind her was the figure of Satoko, standing up and looking right into the eyes of her fierce uncle. She watched as her uncle threw a large punch that caused Satoko to stumble backwards. However, the girl managed to stop herself from falling at the last minute and stood strong, looking into the eyes of her uncle with confidence and strength.

Satoshi was in the corner, watching with worry in his eyes. He did not need to do anything, though. Satoko could defend herself just fine.

"In this world, Satoko is not the Satoko you know of, as you have found out already. She is an independent, strong girl capable of defending herself." Rion and Mion watched on as the image before them continued, with her uncle shouting a long list of swear words at the girl, who in return didn't seem to be the least bit fazed. "She can even stand up to her uncle and aunt, who were both horribly abusive. In the world you lived in, Satoko would have never been able to stand up to such behavior."

Mion watched on. The yellow-haired girl's aunt had appeared and began to yell at her along with her uncle, and Satoko just stood her ground, looking almost challengingly at them. Satoshi was still watching, wanting to make a move but not being sure if it was truly necessary. "If this is a world without regrets, then…?"

"Then Satoko's regret would be the fact that she always depended on her older brother. You know that he left because he contracted Hinamizawa Syndrome, but she still believes it was her clingy behavior and the fact that she was unable to stand up for herself that did it." Rion took a breath as she continued to watch, staring at Satoko as she yelled right back in the faces of her aunt and uncle. "It's partially true, of course, but that doesn't matter. In this world, she doesn't need to feel the regret of relying on Satoshi. She's gained the trait of being able to do everything herself and stand up to her uncle and aunt." She turned towards the boy in the corner, who looked about ready to jump into the fight, though he seemed nervous. "As for Satoshi, because of this, he doesn't kill his aunt on the night of the Watanagashi. It's actually partially because of that, and partially because it is also his regret. He did not regret saving Satoko, but since he thinks that's what caused his Hinamizawa Syndrome, he regrets it. And because of this, his aunt and uncle are still with the two of them, though they are able to fight them off."

Mion watched the scene before her in awe. Satoko was perfectly capable of fending for herself, it seemed. Comparing that with the image of Satoko crying and clinging onto Satoshi, begging for him to save her, everything seemed completely different about her. She was a new person in this world. Whether or not she had changed for the better, though, Mion didn't know.

Rion clapped her hands together, and Mion shut her eyes again as the bright light took over the area around them. Now, when she opened her eyes, she was somewhere completely different. In front of her was the image of her friend that she hadn't seen in so long, Ryuuguu Rena. She was not alone, though. Beside her was the man Mion recognized as being her father, and on her other side was a woman who resembled her quite a bit. Mion instantly assumed that she was Rena's mother, who had long ago divorced her father and left Rena.

"Rena has always regretted her parent's divorce. It was a horrible incident, and lead to her believing that Oyashiro was stalking her. She also believed that she was the cause, because she had always known that her mother was cheating but didn't think much of it, which lead her to try to commit suicide out of guilt. So, in this world, that regret is gone. Never did her parents divorce," Rion explained.

Mion looked at the image. She was happily chatting with her father and mother, and all three of them were wearing smiles on their faces. This was shocking, and heavily contrasted of the images Rena would describe of her mother and father bickering after he found out about her divorce. She would speak of images like her father crying, begging and asking her mother why such a thing had happened, but her refusing to respond. She even told her when her father asked her if she had known about her cheating on him, and when she had said yes, he had slapped her. Right after, however, the two had broken down crying in each other's embrace. It was never pleasant. And yet, here, all of them were perfectly happy. Mion looked at Rena, to her smiling face as she giggled at a joke her father had just told. Rena truly was happy here.

Rion once again clapped her hand together, and light once again began to form. Just as she had done all the other times, Mion shut her eyes tightly until the light completely faded away. When she opened her eyes, she was face to face with a very strange scene.

Before her was something that Mion was sure hadn't happened before, be it in this world or her own. Before her was the image of Rika and Satoko sitting their in front of a few graves. Satoko was practically crying her own eyes out as tears splattered the ground before her, creating puddles of unimaginable sizes. Rika, however, just looked dark, with her bangs covering her eyes and not shedding a single tear. The very strange part about the image, however, was the names that were written on the graves. One of them was her own, the other was Keiichi's, and the other was Rena's.

"I know what you're thinking right now," Rion said. "You're wondering what this image is, because you know that this has never happened before."

Mion turned to the goddess and nodded.

"It hasn't in your world. I know it may seem like a strange tale, but this is something that has happened. It happened in an alternate universe. Furude Rika, as you don't actually know, spent several hundreds of years traveling through alternate universe, looking for one that had a happy ending." Rion watched the two girls. Satoko's tears didn't seem to end and kept pouring out, but Rika's didn't look like they were about to start. "Do you remember the time you faced Takano?"

Mion was very confused, but she nodded anyways.

A month ago, on the day of the Watanagashi festival, her club had stopped a plan created by Takano, the local nurse, to kill Rika and destroy all of Hinamizawa in the process. It had ended in a total victory for them, with Takano being dragged away and Hinamizawa saved.

"It didn't always end that way. Rika had lived through many worlds where it ended with her being brutally murdered, and all the way she watched as her friends were brutally murdered, sometimes by Takano… and sometimes by each other," Rion explained to the girl.

Mion turned to Rion, disbelief painting her face. She had never heard of such a thing, and she wasn't sure if she could believe it. However, seeing as how she was in alternate universe now, and seeing how Rion was Oyashiro and would know, Mion knew it was highly likely that it had indeed happened.

"I know it's a lot to take in, but it happened. Perhaps I'll tell the tale to you one day, but I need to explain this for now." Rion pointed to the image before her, at Rika. "You see? She's not crying. She's been through this world tons of times before. It's what shaped and changed her into the Rika you know, with a side darker than midnight. She regrets it terribly. So in this world, it never happened. She's a genuinely cheerful child with no dark side, as it never got a chance to form."

Mion didn't know what to make of it. It did sound like it happened, though, judging by what Rion was explaining. Could she really believe that such a thing happened, that Rika was really over hundreds of years old, that the blue-haired girl had witnessed worlds where she had been killed, and where she herself had killed? It could happen, and it probably did… it was just a lot to take in.

And when Rion clapped her hands and when light enveloped and left again, Mion found herself back in her own room. She stood up slowly, thinking about all that she had just learned. Everything had answers now. She knew why the tattoo incident hadn't happened, why Rena wasn't here, why Satoshi was, why Satoko was different, why Rika didn't have a dark side… everything seemed to make sense now.

And yet, there was still one thing that had gone unanswered.

"But what about Kei-chan?" Mion asked, turning to the goddess. "He has always regretted the incident with the model gun. It hurts him to think about it, and he dreads the very fact that it happened every single day! And yet, it happened here. Shouldn't it have not happened if that's his regret?'

Rion shrugged. "I… don't know… why Keiichi's biggest regret hasn't disappeared. The only thing I can think of is that he has a bigger regret that didn't happen, something that doesn't change who he is and where he is…" she admitted.

_A… bigger… regret?_ But what could be bigger than the model gun incident that he dreaded so much? Was there something deeper and darker that he kept locked deep in his heart, something that didn't even change who he was despite how dark it was? It didn't seem possible that he had a regret even bigger than the incident with the model gun.

"And you don't know what it is?" Mion asked.

Rion shook her head. "I don't know. I said I don't know a few things, and that's one thing I don't know…"

Mion sighed. If only she knew the answers, then maybe she would be able to rest a little easier. However, now that she had a new question, she would be looking for answers. Did Keiichi really have a regret deeper and darker than the model gun incident? Was it even possible to have a regret that deep and strong that didn't even change who he was when it was demolished?  
>"That's really confusing…" Mion sighed.<p>

"I know, but please don't think about it too much. I'll try to figure out the answer, but for now… don't worry!" Rion's voice went back to being its normal, cheerful tone and a genuine smile painted her face. She turned a lot more mature when it came to dark and serious matters like what they had just been talking about, Mion noted, but she usually acted very cheerful. "It's not going to do any good to think about it! All you have to know is what you learned for now. I don't think you should think too much about it. I think that you should forget it and try to move on and relax! It doesn't matter too much, does it?" Rion said.

It really didn't matter; it would just be nice to know. The fact that he could be hiding a darker secret was just too confusing and it was eating away at her, and it was just a fact that she would like to know. It wouldn't affect the world at all to know or anything like that.

"Think on the bright side. I know you're hurt that you lost your world… but… this one doesn't have any regrets. It may have it's downsides, but isn't it happier without those regrets?" Rion told her.

She thought about that for a while. Yes, it did have its downsides… but… was everyone happier here? Here, Shion was happy because she was not hated by her family and was treated well. Satoshi was perfectly happy as he was here, even though he had his aunt and uncle here. Of course, Satoko was perfectly capable of putting up with them so there was no reason to really worry about the presence of his aunt and uncle. Satoko was happy; too, even though she acted like a jerk, she was happy with being that way. Rika was cheerful here without any knowledge of the dark worlds she had been said to have traveled through in the past, and she had no dark side to her. She was just a sweet, cheerful child. And Rena… even though she wasn't here, Mion had seen how happy she was in that image. She was smiling, her parents were smiling, and they were all laughing. It was completely different from what Rena had gone through in the past, and she was perfectly happy living there. She didn't need Hinamizawa to be happy. As for Keiichi… well, there was nothing different, and even though he still had the regret of the model gun, there had to be another darker regret he threw away, making him happier while not changing him. As for her… well, she was still her. It wasn't different for her aside from the name and she was still the same person. Still, though, she didn't mind being Shion so much. As long as her sister was happy, she was. She was fine with having her birth name. It was her birth name and what she was supposed to have, anyways. It wasn't like she couldn't handle the bad things her family was saying about her, anyways. This world was fine for her, too.

Mion looked at Rion, who gave her a cheerful smile

People really were happier in this world, weren't they?

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**That was a long paragraph. I hope it doesn't look like a monster on the website.**

**Okay, anyways, I hope you liked the chapter. I like writing interactions between Mion and Shion… they're just fun characters and I love them both so much. Mion, Shion, and Keiichi are by far the most fun for me to write. And no, that scene wasn't twincest, as I mentioned in Crimso's Notes (V.2). Don't think of their relationship as that. It will never be like that in the show or in any of my fanfictions. I liked writing the ending scene, too. It was fun showing all of those images and the differences. I'm sure you and Mion have a better understanding of this world, now. Well, I know Mion does…**

**Right. I don't have much to say here today, either. Huh? I'm running out of things to say, aren't I? Uh… well, as you know, this week is full of testing so I hope to be updating a little more this week. I want to work a little on the next chapter tomorrow, at least doing half of it and seeing if I can finish the second part on Wednesday. That's just a plan, though. Don't trust it or me. I'm not trustworthy with that sort of thing.**

**Can you believe February is almost over? It makes me scared. I have four months until camp. Let's hope we can get this fanfiction done by then…**

**~Crimso**


	14. Chapter 13: Goals

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I'd start out this chapter by saying I'm in class, but you should assume that. …Actually, never mind, I already did. As you know, this week was basically testing. I said that I would update more because the teacher's aren't supposed to give homework during these three days… they aren't **_**supposed **_**to, anyways. But they did. I found myself with a history essay, science research report, a test to study for (though that's on Monday), writing assignments for English, three chapters to read for English… okay, you get the point. I wish we had study hall. Instead, they cancelled it for testing, which they were going to have instead of class first period. Needless to say, I'm mad about it. In order to apologize, I hope to update today, Sunday, and Tuesday. You know you can't trust me too much, but I'm going to work hard to do that.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirteen: Goals_

Class thankfully seemed to fly by, and soon enough, it was lunchtime. Mion watched as her friends began to organize a large table by pushing their desks together, and when it was mostly complete, she did the same. They each took a seat at their desks, now transformed into a huge table for all of them, and took out their lunches. Mion glanced over to Satoshi, who was eyeing Satoko and wondering if he should even bother today. Almost every day he would come to talk to her about how good it would be for her to have friends, but each time she refused to listen and the outcome was never different. It was truly pointless.

"I don't think you should bother," Shion said, voicing the thoughts of everyone at the table. "You know it's not going to make a difference."

Satoshi sighed. "I know, but… when I look at her, I sometimes think that she's just so lonely. I know my sister better than anyone else. I know she's strong, but… sometimes… I just don't know if she's really as strong on the inside. Maybe she's hurt…" he spoke gently, gazing at his sister in his twisted position. She was currently taking out her lunch and after eyeing it, began to eat slowly.

"Mii," Rika said, her tiny voice piping right up. "I think that Satoko is okay. She never wants to play or anything like that. She seems happy about not playing, too."

Mion looked over to Satoko. She had never really taken too careful observation of her any time other than lunchtime, but it really did appear that she had no interest in playing, either. What did she do, then? Did she just sit around and think? Perhaps she thought that she was too good for toys or something similar to that.

"It's okay, Rika," Shion told her. "I'll play with you if you're bored."

Rika smiled at Shion. "Thank you, Mi. Mr. Cat was getting a little bored without anyone else to play with but me. Shi had some very nice friends for Mr. Cat back at her house!" she said, turning to Mion.

Mion faked a laugh, trying to fit in with the new subject. It was clear it was going in another direction, and Mion would rather talk about that than Satoko and have Satoshi worry some more. He was still looking at Satoko a little unsure, but it didn't seem like he was going to leave. "Well, yeah. Onee and I have a bunch of toys at home. We've never really bothered throwing them out…"

Shion frowned. "I don't think that's a good way to put it, Shion. It's more like we don't want to throw them out. It would be too sad."  
>Mion rubbed the back of her head. "Yeah, that's what it is," she admitted. She hadn't really wanted to say that because it may come off as a little out of character and embarrassing, but it was the truth.<p>

"I don't know what happened to my old toys," Keiichi admitted as he stirred some rice around with his chopsticks absentmindedly. "I think that my mom has them in an old box somewhere."

"Ours are in a chest we keep in our room," Mion explained to the boy. "We don't often play with them or anything, but…"

Rika shot another one of her signature cute smiles. "Mii, I think it's good that Mii and Shii keep their toys so close. Mr. Cat was very happy to meet the cats that Mii and Shii played with when they were my age! Nipah~!" she beamed.

"What about you, Satoshi-kun?" Shion asked, clearly trying to distract the blonde-haired boy from the sight of his sister, who was right now looking perfectly content with eating by herself and thinking about whatever a girl like her about. "Where do you keep your old toys, if you still have them?"

It seemed to work, as Satoshi turned away from his sister so that he could look at the group that he was currently talking to. "Oh, I still have my favorite toys in an old box in my closet. I wanted to give them to Satoko to play with, but she doesn't really enjoy that thing, I don't think," he said. He looked a little saddened at the thought. Satoko, if she had been like the Satoko in her world, would definitely enjoy a stuffed toy if it came from her brother. She wasn't the type of person to play with stuffed toys like that, but it would be a completely different matter if it had been a gift from her older brother who she loved so much.

"My favorite toy when I was little was a cat," Shion said to change the topic as soon as she noticed that the boy was beginning to get a little uneasy. "I named her Ayumi. Shion had an identical cat named Azumi. The only way you could tell them apart was by the color of the bows we put around their necks," she explained.

"Mii, they're identical twins! Just like Mii and Shii," Rika said. "Mr. Cat had a ton of fun meeting them. Mr. Cat is my favorite toy because he's new, but I have a bunch of other toys. I like Mr. Cow and Ms. Bull."

_Shouldn't it be the other way around?_ Mion thought.

"I used to have a dog of some sort that I carried around everywhere," Keiichi said, his eyes filled with distant memories. "I think he was a beagle of some kind. But my parents couldn't get that dog away from me, no matter how hard they tried…" He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, I was quite the child at times."

"Aw, Kei-chan's all embarrassed because he used to do something so cute!" Mion said teasingly. "Hehe, Kei-chan thinks he's all manly, so he doesn't want to admit that he carried around a toy~," she added on in her singsong voice.

Keiichi flustered. "H-Hey! It's nothing like that."

Mion stuck her tongue out at the boy.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Satoshi spoke. "I had a toy that I carried with me a lot of the places I went to, too." He smiled gently at the thought, old memories filling his head. It was good to see him smiling, perhaps the thoughts of Satoko chased away for the time being. "I think he was a horse."

"Aw, that's cute!" Shion replied. It was the exact response that Mion was expecting of her sister, seeing as she liked him so much. "You see, Kei-chan, Satoshi-kun's not scared of admitting something like that."

"I wasn't scared of admitting it!" Keiichi protested. "I just… agh!"

Mion laughed. Keiichi could be so funny sometimes, even if it was unintentional. That had to be one of the many reasons why she liked him, though Mion could never really put her finger on why she found the boy so attractive. Every time she did, she would end up bursting into a huge wave of blushes and try to shake any thoughts about the boy out of her head.

"I think that I want a squirrel next time I go to the store," Rika commented. "I don't have a squirrel. I will name her Ms. Squirrel."

"Ms. Squirrel? Are all your animals named Ms. or Mr. and then the kind of animal they are?" Keiichi asked.

Rika shook her head. "No, I have a dolphin I named Hiro. He is very cute. I also have a few other toys, but there are too many to list!" She smiled just as sweetly as she usually did as she finished her sentence, adding some charm.

Satoshi smiled at the sight of Rika so happy. Perhaps deep down inside, he was wishing that his little sister would do the same thing. "I like that name for a dolphin. I never had a stuffed dolphin. As I said, my favorite was a horse, but I also had this pig I really liked…"

"I had quite a few, but I shared all of them but Ayumi with Shion," Shion said. "And Shion didn't share Azumi with me. That's the way things were with us."

"Sharing toys seems tricky," Rika said with a small frown. "I think that it would be complicated, because maybe I want to play with Mr. Cat, but then the person I share Mr. Cat with wants to play with him too, and then we fight…"

Mion couldn't help but a laugh a little at that. Yes, there were quite a few times where she and Shion would start bickering over who got to play with what toy, and they would end up saying something similar to "I'm not talking to you ever again!" and then they would stand there in anger for a while. Then, minutes later, they would forget that they had decided not to speak ever again and start chatting happily about one thing or another. When she looked back on it, she really did miss those times, even though it seemed like the worst thing that had ever happened whenever she was in the middle of a fight with Shion back ten.

"There was this stuffed panda bear Shion and I shared, and we both loved it so much. We would always want the panda bear, and we would always fight about it. We caused such a huge ruckus about that panda bear that Mom had to go out and buy another one for us." Shion smiled fondly as she remembered it. "We shared those two, too, but whenever Shion would want a panda bear, I would just take the other."

"I remember that!" Mion said with a laugh. "We really loved those panda bears, didn't we?"

"Yeah. They were pretty much our favorites after Azumi and Ayumi, weren't they?" Shion responded.

It was good to see that even small things like that still happened in this world, despite the huge changes that this world had had. Even a series of fights over a panda bear toy that held no significance to them anymore other than to look back fondly on what had happened. It made Mion feel a little more comfortable in this world.

"I guess you two had a lot of fun as children, didn't you?" Satoshi commented. "You have such a rich family, so I bet they spoiled you rotten."

"At times," Shion said with a grin. "But we weren't too spoiled."

That was true. She had been able to get most anything she wanted when she was little, but that didn't mean she was spoiled and that her past was full of happiness. No, she usually got all those gifts because of how bad her parents felt for the two of them…

Mion shook that out. This was supposed to be a happy conversation.

"My mom would never get me anything I wanted unless I behaved for a few weeks!" complained Keiichi as he leaned back in his chair. "It was really annoying!"

"Of course you would say that, Kei-chan!" Mion teased.

"Hey!" cried Keiichi.

Satoshi looked between the two of them and laughed a little, and for a few good moments, Mion could see a huge smile painting his face. She couldn't help but smile at that, and when she looked over to her sister, she realized that she too was smiling.

The conversation continued on until lunch had ended. Mion and the rest had managed to distract Satoshi for a good amount of time, leading to the topic of Satoko and his current troubles never being brought up and him relaxing for once. It was always wonderful to see him smile without a worry in the world, seeing how troubled he could be. Usually, he had Satoko or another matter on his mind and couldn't fully enjoy these kinds of conversations.

During class, though, he seemed to have gone back to his normal self as he stared at Satoko doing her work. Mion had decided that she didn't really want to bother with math or any other subject seeing what had happened last time, and took the time to go ahead and watch what Satoko was up to, too.

It seemed like she didn't have a care in the world. She just sat there, tapping her pencil on her desk as she stared at the math problems. Whenever she had come up with a way to do something, she would quickly scribble down the answers. It seemed sometimes that she had quite a bit of trouble, but she never once considered asking Chie, and she never made a big fuss about it. Mion noticed times where Chie was completely free and spent her time at her desk turning through pages of her book, so it couldn't have been that Chie was too busy and that she couldn't help Satoko. So whenever she came to something she didn't know, she would pause and think about it on her own. She didn't seem to be too frustrated when she ran into that kind of problem, either. Even after a while of thinking, she would remain cool about the situation and sometimes pull out her math notebook for instructions. Mion wondered how she could do that. Usually, people tended to lose their cool when frustrated with math. She herself sometimes did that when she was actually trying.

Satoko leaned back in her chair when she was done, looking at her finished work with a look of pride on her face. She stuffed the finished worked into her folder neatly, and when that was done, she took out a new sheet and began working on it. It was some homework she had to do for science, from what Mion could tell. She had her science textbook open, and she was reading through it and answering the questions that were on the sheet. She seemed to be reading fast, as Mion could see the pages being flipped every minute or so. When she had skipped an answer, she simply flipped a few pages back, read for about five seconds and scribbled something down.

She didn't seem to be troubled at all by her work. She just did it and didn't complain if she didn't know an answer or if she couldn't figure something out. She didn't even seem to think about the idea of asking Chie for help. She probably believed that she didn't need help from an adult, and that she was good to go on her own. That went well with the fact that Satoko believed that she was independent and could stand up for herself. It applied to homework, too.

"…Does she get the answers right, or does she just kind of do it wrong?" Mion heard Shion whisper a little loudly to Satoshi.

Satoshi shook his head. "I'm not too sure, but she gets her homework done and doesn't complain too much about it. I don't see Chie lecturing her, so that's a sign that she may be doing well. She never lets me look at her work. Then again, I guess Chie has learned. When she lectures Satoko, she just kind of pretends to listen and doesn't take her advice into mind…" he whispered back.

"I guess that she thinks that she doesn't need anyone to help her at all, no matter what the case is," Shion commented.

He nodded. "That's what it is. Even at home, I tell her to clean her room or something like that, and how to do it, and she doesn't listen. She will clean her room… just whenever she feels like she needs to do it. She doesn't neglect cleaning it, though. She cleans up maybe every two weeks or so…" he replied, watching as his little sister closed her science textbook.

"I don't think it's really true, though," Shion said. "I think she could use some help. It didn't look like she was spending too much time on those science questions."

"Well, most people tend to skip to the questions and scan the reading for the answers. That may have been what she was doing…"

Mion wondered. If she hadn't been doing too well, then she definitely didn't make it seem like it. Perhaps she just didn't care as long as she got it done on her own? There was no way to tell unless she was to check the scores on her paper, and there was no way she could take a look from over where she was.

"Satoko's more the type of person to take pride in whatever she does, so long as she does it on her own," Rion observed as she appeared in front of Mion, sitting on the desk. "I think that it doesn't matter if she did it well or not…"

Rion could be right about that. Maybe that was the type of person she was in this world. So long as she did it on her own, she was fine. Judging by what Satoshi was saying, it seemed to be the case, but there was no way to be sure.

"It doesn't seem very good. Chie-sensei is going to get angry with her!" Rion cried out. "And then she's going to yell at her, and it's going to be _scary._ I don't like it when people yell!"

_But Satoko doesn't care about that kind of thing_ Mion noted as she twirled her pencil on the desk. _She doesn't find yelling scary, so she wouldn't mind if Chie were to yell at her for any reason._

Mion sighed. If only Satoko would open up her heart to her someday. Then maybe this world would be a little better than it was now.

_~~~~X~~~~_

As usual, Mion found herself all packed up after school, watching as Satoshi finished putting away all of his things. Keiichi, Satoko, and Rika had already left, leaving her, Satoshi, and Shion in the room. Shion was watching her sister watch Satoshi, a little confused as to why she was doing that. Mion wondered if Shion was considering the idea of her having a crush on Satoshi, but she doubted it after she had admitted her crush on Keiichi. It still seemed as if she was a little worried, though.

Mion wondered just how much her sister cared for Satoshi in this world. Was her crush big, or was it just a small little thing? She knew that her sister's interest in Satoshi had been quite large in her world, to the point where she stood in front of her enraged family and yelled out about how much she loved him. This had been the same incident that made her lose three of her fingernails, but how that had contributed was a different story all together.

"Shion, Batcha wants me to come home right away and work for as long as I can," Shion explained. "I don't think I'll be able to come out and talk to you for a while."

"Oh, that's fine," Mion responded. "I don't mind. I'll just head out and take a walk around the village or something like that while you're doing whatever you're doing with Onibaba."

Mion didn't mention that she was going to take a walk around the village with Satoshi again, just like she normally did. It may get her a little jealous and suspicious, and that was the last thing that Mion wanted. If her crush was anything as strong as it was in the world before, it would be terrible to mention such a thing. Shion was the type to get jealous about that sort of thing.

Shion nodded and smiled. "Good." She turned to the clock while she slung her backpack over her shoulder, observing the time written on it. "Well, I have to run home or Batcha's going to get really mad at me again. See you then, okay?"

"Okay, bye!"

Mion watched as he sister hurried out the door and into the hall. When she was gone from sight, Mion turned to Satoshi, who simply smiled at her.

"Thanks again for all of this, Shion," Satoshi spoke out. "Really, it means a lot to me."

Mion nodded. "Of course. You're welcome again. I'll do anything to cheer up my friends!"

"That's just like you, Shion."

The two friends exited the building with their bags and found themselves wandering down the paths of Hinamizawa, heading towards the paths that were more encased in forest trees. She wondered if he was feeling a little better now after their happy and rather pointless conversation at lunch, where he was able to forget his problems a little and discuss something like stuffed toys. She hadn't seen him smile so big before, except when he was a child and his parents were still alive and the dam war hadn't even started. Those were the only times he was truly carefree. However, every time after it had been harsh for him, even if he didn't tend to show it.

A while back, Hinamizawa had been engaged in something that was now called the dam war. During the dam war, a dam had been planned to be built near Hinamizawa. However, this dam was a dam that would cause Hinamizawa and nearby villages to be flooded by water and would cause the village to be completely submerged. The villagers would have to move. Of course, not many of the villagers reacted well to this. Hinamizawa was a sacred village where their families had lived for generations, and they were just planning to kick them out like that and flood their village? It was unacceptable! For that reason, the villagers decided to stand up against the dam. They fought hard against it, protesting loudly and even causing quite a bit of violence. There was no way that they were going to let their village be submerged.

However, some but few villagers were fine with it. The government promised to supply the villagers with jobs and homes if the village was flooded, and the people of Hinamizawa that weren't very rich took this as an opportunity. In truth, there were many families in Hinamizawa who didn't have as much money. Not everyone was as rich as The Three Great Families were. One of these families was the Houjou family. The Houjou couple, who were Satoko and Satoshi's parents, were the most involved and openly opposed the dam war, saying that the villagers should just let the dam be submerged.

Of course, no one took very well to this. They were quickly labeled as outcasts, and everyone fought against them. They threatened them and called them terrible names. For that reason, the Houjou family, even after the dam war ended, was hated on. Even if their parents were dead, Satoko and Satoshi were still labeled as traitors to the village. They hadn't even been the ones opposed the first place! It was their parents, not them. Everyone ignored them, and when they had to acknowledge them, they would yell at them and call them names.

Just recently in her own world, the hate for the Houjou family had been lifted. In truth, no one hated the Houjou's anymore. Everyone just was afraid to admit that the dam war was over and that they didn't hold any more grudges against the children of the supposed traitors of the village. However, Mion didn't know if it was the same in this world. They had to fight to fix that problem, and she didn't know if they had bothered fighting, especially considering how Satoko was in this world.

Heck, she didn't even know if the dam war had happened, but she was pretty sure it had. It was no one's regret that the dam war had happened; so that mean it hadn't been changed.

_So there's more pressure on Satoshi then just Satoko. But… I wonder if he can really hold it all up. Satoko's fine with it, but Satoshi… I don't know._

"Did you have a good day?" Mion decided to ask the boy to start up some form of conversation and hopefully cheer him up a little, as it seemed he was slipping into bad thoughts again.

"Yeah, I liked the conversations we had," Satoshi said. "It was nice discussing those kinds of things…"

"I agree. It's always fun talking with friends, no matter what the topic of conversation is!" she cried out.

He didn't say anything after that, though. He just nodded and looked down at the ground, a sad smile on his face. It was clear that there was just too much on his mind at the moment to be cheerful. She had managed to distract him before, but now… Mion sighed. It was hard to distract his thoughts.

"You know, I hadn't seen you smile so genuinely before. You're under a lot of stress and pressure, aren't you?" Mion commented. She didn't want to bring up the subject as these little walks were meant to relax, but it seemed odd not to, and if he needed to let out his feelings, then this would be best. Perhaps if he shared his thoughts, he could relax a little more.

Satoshi nodded ever so slightly. "Yeah. I'm just a little concerned. I know that Satoko says that she's a strong person, and I've seen her stand up to Uncle and Aunt with such bravery that it puts me to shame, but… I don't know. I just don't know how long she can keep it up for," he admitted. He was walking rather heavily, allowing his arms to swing loosely at his sides as his feet hit the ground hard. "It's like she's going to break sometime."

"I don't know, she seems pretty strong to me," Mion said, hoping it would cheer him up. "I don't think she's going to break that easily."

"I don't know. She says she doesn't need things like friends, but I know it's not true. Everyone needs to have friends. If you want to feel better, all you have to do is talk to a friend. Then you can admit everything without worry, and they can make you feel better. I think there's a lot she's holding in," Satoshi replied. His gaze remained locked on the ground, not even bothering to look into his friend's eyes as he spoke to her. "So I feel like at some point, all that she's been holding in is going to break her."

It was always better to talk to a friend when you had trouble, which was exactly what Mion was allowing Satoshi to do right now. It always made her feel better. Whenever Mion had felt under pressure, she would always talk about it with either Shion or Rena, sometimes both of them, and she would feel much better afterwards. If Satoko was really holding pain in, then it was possible she could break at some point. However, knowing how strong Satoko was and how she really didn't care about having friends, Mion was pretty sure that she wasn't going to break anytime soon. That was Satoko's greatest regret, and since that had been fixed, it wasn't likely it was going to happen.

"It's okay, Satoshi-kun. I don't think she's in any real danger of breaking. She… she says she doesn't need friends, and the look she wears on her face when she talks about it shows that she really means it. She's been holding it in for all these years, so why now?" Mion spoke, hoping that her words would cheer him up. She sometimes felt as if she was terrible at making people feel better, so she sure hoped that she was saying the right things right now. "She seems sturdy enough not to break."

"I want her to have friends, though. As much as she tries to deny it, everyone needs friends. She claims she's happy as she is, but I don't think that it's true happiness if she's just sitting around and thinking about random things and doing homework. I want her to be happy with friends and experience what fun can really be," Satoshi replied. He finally lifted his head up, but this time, it was to look at the sky and into the distance and not at Mion. There was somewhat of a distant look in his purple eyes, and it concerned Mion. "I think that if she joins in, she'll be really happy. Rika's just her age. They could have fun playing with stuffed toys together, and if Satoko doesn't care for that sort of thing, then they could just talk or something. You know? They would be best friends if Satoko were to give this all ac chance. I'm sure you will make her feel right at home, too, and Mion too even though she did threaten Satoko with a chair that one time." He shook that off quickly. "No, it's because she wanted her to join in that she did that. That just goes to show what a good friend she would be if Satoko would just allow herself to make friends. And then there's Keiichi, too. He'd be more than happy to be friends with her. I feel like she'd be much happier if she'd just let herself join the group and learn what friendship could be. There's more to life then what she's doing. She could be playing games or chatting with us, and she's just wasting away, sitting there as she tries to prove how strong she is…"

Mion listened to everything he said intently. If he needed to let out his feelings, she would listen to every single last word that came out of his mouth. That's what friends were for, after all.

"…Satoshi-kun… do you really want Satoko to join in with us and make friends that much? Does it mean that much to you?" Mion asked the boy.

He nodded. "It would mean everything if she could just join in with us and have a blast, even if it was just for one time…" he spoke in a mix between his normal, gentle voice and a whisper.

Mion knew that Satoko was missing out on a lot in this world. She knew who Satoko could be, and while this change was making her stronger, it didn't mean that she had to go and show it off to the point where she thought that having friends was a sign of weakness. That wasn't true. Friends weren't a weakness. If anything, friends were a strength. Mion knew that this world would never be complete if they didn't bring Satoko back to her old personality. They didn't need to change her regret of not being able to stand up for herself, she could do that too, but just not to the point where she thought having friends was a way of showing that she wasn't strong.

But how would she be able to get Satoko back into the group? How would she open up her heart?

Mion thought. Back in her own world, Satoko had been broken at one point. Mion had healed her through teaching her all kinds of card games and outdoor games, and instantly brought out who she really was. It was the opposite here, though. She wasn't broken, just too stubborn. However, if something like cards had brought her out of her shell, then why wouldn't it work here, even it this shell she wore was of a different kind? If she could just teach Satoko some games, then maybe, just maybe her personality would come out…

"Satoshi-kun, I think I have a way to bring Satoko into our group," she told him.

He turned towards her for the first time in what seemed like forever and looked into her green eyes with shock visible in his purple ones. "You do?" he said, disbelief in his voice.

Mion nodded. "I think I know what to do, Satoshi-kun. Just leave it to me, okay? I'll teach her."

Satoshi looked a little unsure. "But you know, I've been trying, too. It doesn't work for me, so… I don't know if it's going to work for you. It's really tough, and—"

Mion just smiled. "I know it's not going to be easy, but I have an idea. Watch and see what I do, okay? I'm sure it'll bring her out of hiding."

Satoshi still wasn't sure, but he removed that look from his face and just smiled, nodding firmly. "Okay. I trust you, Shion."

_~~~~X~~~~_

Later that day, Mion found herself on her futon again, with Shion next to her. The two of them hadn't said very much to each other, as Shion appeared to be in deep thought and Mion didn't want to disturb her. However, there was something she needed to ask her, and it was bugging her quite a bit. Mion watched as her sister sat there, staring at the wall as she thought about things that Mion couldn't even begin to guess.

"So, Onee," Mion said, finally deciding to drag her sister away from her thoughts.

"Huh?" Shion spoke, turning to look at her sister with a surprised expression on her face.

"…You know, about Satoshi-kun…" Mion began to speak. She didn't say anything after that, and simply waited for a reaction from Shion. She just looked a little confused if anything, so Mion continued. "I know you like him," she finished.

Shion flustered and looked away. "Yeah, I guess you could say that,"

It wasn't like her sister to get embarrassed like that. Satoshi was the only thing that could possibly make her sister go quiet and red. She was usually fine with any topic and was never embarrassed, much to Mion's dismay. "Onee, I mean… just how much do you like Satoshi-kun, anyways? I sometimes see you looking at him in class…"

Mion hadn't ever seen her sister's face so red.

"Ah, yeah. I do that sometimes when I'm bored, I guess. I just don't like doing work…" Shion looked down at the futon, though that didn't hide her reddened cheeks from Mion, though she didn't know if that was what Shion was trying to do in the first place.

"You really like Satoshi-kun, don't you?" Mion said.

She nodded. "Well, yes…"

She was embarrassed about the subject, but she certainly didn't get nearly as embarrassed as Mion did when the subject of Keiichi was brought up. She knew how to deal with her feelings better than Mion did, even if she wasn't really acting on them.

It did seem that Shion's feelings for Satoshi were just as strong, though. It was good to take note of that sort of thing. _And I like the fact that there are a few things that are the same here. It makes me feel better…_

"I don't know what it is, but there's just something about Satoshi-kun that makes me feel really, really, really happy… He's just so warm," she admitted.

Mion smiled at her sister. It was nice that she could be near the one she loved in this world. Satoshi was missing in the real world, and she was heartbroken by it. Satoshi was being held in a coma under the clinic, and it was possible he would never wake up, as the syndrome was currently incurable. Every day, it broke Shion's heart to know that her love may never return to her. But in this world, she could be with him always.

She had to wonder, though, if Satoshi liked her back.

Satoshi hadn't really talked about Shion with her, so she wouldn't know. However, if she was going to make this world better, Mion knew that she would have to make sure that Satoshi and Shion ended up happily together, too, and not just her and Keiichi. If she was taking these daily walks with him, then why couldn't she push the two of them together?

The answer was simple. She didn't know how to deal with romantic feelings and if she didn't know how to get together with Keiichi herself, then how could she push Satoshi and Shion together? She wanted to, but it was just a very complicated situation she didn't know how to deal with. Shion had told her to be herself, then Keiichi would fall in love with her. Did that mean that Shion just had to be herself, too?

At least she could ask Satoshi about what he thought about her. That was the least she could do.

"I hope that you two will get together," Mion said truthfully.

Shion turned towards her. "Huh?"

"I mean it, Onee. I really hope that you two can find happiness with each other. I'm sure that you can," Mion told her, giving her a reassuring smile. She wasn't sure if Shion felt insecure or if she wasn't sure that Satoshi liked her back, but she hoped what she was saying would help her somehow. She had picked her up when she was feeling down about Keiichi, so it was time to repay the favor, if only just a little bit.

Shion smiled warmly at her sister. "Thanks, Shion. I hope that we can, too. I'll work hard towards it. I hope that you too will find happiness with Kei-chan."

Mion nodded. "Thanks, and you're welcome."

There was just so much that she needed to do in this world to make it better, Mion realized. If she wanted to make this world perfect so that it would make up for the fact that she had lost her old world, her home, then she needed to work really hard towards this goal. She had already promised Satoshi that she was going to bring Satoko to the group, so that was definitely something she had to get started on. When she had the chance, she would ask Satoshi about Shion. Later, hopefully she would get a chance to spend more time with Keiichi. She wanted a rematch in Go Fish, for one. She would have to find time for that, but she wasn't sure she could if Satoshi was free tomorrow.

Mion sighed. Well, she would have to start fixing this world up soon, or else it may not happen as quickly as she would like it to.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner v.3**

**Testing went okay. I think I didn't do as well as I want to or as my parents want me to do, so that's bad. I don't know, though. These things don't really count for much, but my mom thinks they're really important. Sigh. I don't know again. Well, at least that's over, as well as my short week that shouldn't have been as work-filled and busy as it was! Now I get to return to my weekend for a brief amount of time. Spring Break is in three weeks, so that's two weeks off then! I can't wait. Spring Break, hurry up and come!**

**I'm still new to this SatoShion pairing, so bear with me as I try to write it. I had SatoShion in BFB but it was under extremely different circumstances as this. I hope that I got her feelings for him right and her reaction and how she sees him. I know this pairing is going to turn up a lot more in the future so I want to get it right! Really, I actually like SatoShion a lot more than I used to. My love for it has gone up about five times in the past two weeks, maybe even the past week. KeiMion is still my favorite, though. It always will be. **

**Okay, I'm going to end here. I'm a little angry right now. One of my fandoms is in a riot because of something that just happened and no one is taking well to it, including me. It's kind of a big deal. So yeah, I want to go check that out and splash my anger with a bucket of cold water. I still need to proofread, too. I need to calm myself down…**

**~Crimso**


	15. Chapter 14: Embarrassment

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I don't have too much to say here. I don't want to go to school tomorrow. Maybe I'll convince my mom to let me sleep in… at least miss first period, you know?**

**Note: I know there's not much action, but there isn't going to be that kind of stuff at this point in the story. I know what I'm doing, and I know what you're looking forward to, so just hold on there. You know how all my previous fanficitons have been, and while this one isn't nearly as long, it's going to be similar in terms of build up.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Fourteen: Embarrassment_

Mornings before school were always dreadful, at least for Mion. She always hated having to wake up so early in order to go to that evil place that had been labeled school, though Mion found it easier and a little more fitting just to call it hell. The one thing that could possibly make such a place bearable was the fact that her friends were there with her during the long hours of school, and that she could talk to them. Of course, talking in class wasn't allowed and was heavily frowned upon, though that never seemed to stop her. She didn't particularly care all that much if she got in trouble, either. Chie's lectures had long ago stopped having their effect on her.

Mion sighed as she looked at her school uniform laid out before her. By now, she had gotten used to putting on the white shirt and abnormally short blue skirt every day, and she never once found herself accidently reaching for her sister's uniform. She was much more comfortable wearing her old outfit, but there wasn't much she could do about that. She had even grown a little used to wearing such a short skirt, but Mion still dreaded that part of the outfit. It was embarrassing and uncomfortable, to say the least, and Mion wondered how Shion was even able to bear it in the original world.

She quickly through her clothing on without thinking about it to much, and then reached for the hairbrush and wandered towards the mirror. She stood in front of it as she watched her reflection run the brush through her long locks of green hair, making sure that there weren't any knots and that it was nice and straight. She had gotten a little more used to keeping her hair down while she was at school, too, which was something she would never be seen doing back in her own world with the exception of when she was posing as her sister. The difference in their hairstyles had always been the one way to tell them apart. Even though they now wore different clothing, when they were little and whenever their mother had decided to dress them in identical outfits, they would always have Mion wear her hair in a ponytail and Shion's down with yellow ribbons.

She wondered if she would even wear her hair in a ponytail if she hadn't been told to do so when she was little. She had always felt more comfortable with her hair tied up, but that too was probably influenced by the fact that they made her tie her hair up like that when she was little. It did seem to be the case in this world, seeing as how Shion wore jeans and a t-shirt in this world and Mion wore her sister's white shirt and black skirt, despite the fact that their personalities would suggest the opposite.

Mion began to tie the ribbons into the back of her hair, and when she was done, she looked at herself in the mirror.

_I wonder… _Mion thought as she looked deeply at herself_. I wonder if I can be considered beautiful…_

Mion had never thought much about her appearance and in fact never really cared, but for some reason she found herself taking interest in what she looked like right now. She had never considered herself to be beautiful… but she had always labeled her sister as being beautiful and wondered why some guy hadn't already snatched her up. But… if her sister was beautiful, did that mean that she was, too? They were identical twins. They looked the same in every single way. So if Shion was beautiful, Mion had to be as well.

_I wonder if Kei-chan sees it that way, though._

Mion shook that thought out of her head as her face flustered. She couldn't be thinking about that kind of thing! She told herself that it didn't matter and that she had to carry on without worrying about a thing. Shion had told her that if she continued to be herself, then maybe Keiichi would fall for her. She didn't know if it would really work, but she always trusted her sister's advice. She was much better when it came to the topic of love.

_I shouldn't start caring too much about my appearance, though. It's not like I want to change it or anything like that. _If she were to change it, then she wouldn't be identical to Shion anymore, and that would kill the fun of the occasional twin swaps. She couldn't bear the thought of looking different than her sister and not being able to pull those twin swaps. That had been the source of their fun when they were little, and even now it was hilarious to confuse everyone with their identical appearances. Besides, Shion had told her to be who she was. That had to apply to looks, too. She looked like who she was for the most part, if you discounted the fact that her clothing didn't match her personality. There was no need to change herself for Keiichi. Then, he wouldn't love her for who she truly was.

"And that's the last thing that you want," Rion commented. "If you want to be happy, then I'm sure that you would want Keiichi to love you for who you are and not who you pretend to be in order to get his attention!"

"That's exactly it," Mion breathed as she continued to look at herself in the mirror. "I don't want that to happen. It's just like Onee said. I just need to be myself."

Rion smiled. "That's exactly the way it goes! If you continue to act just like you do now, I'm sure that Keiichi will love you and you'll be very happy. And I'm sure that he'll love you for who you are, and that you won't have to change."

Mion smiled and nodded, looking at herself in the mirror again. She didn't have to worry about appearance. She was fine as she was, and if her sister was beautiful, so was she. She told herself this and decided to be confident with that opinion, even though it did make her sound a little vain. She didn't know if Keiichi thought the same or if anyone else thought the same, but that was fine. She would get along well if she just decided not to think about it and leave the rest up for Keiichi to decide.

Rion wandered up to the mirror and looked at her reflection. She smiled as she ran fingers down her somewhat short chartreuse hair, then moving her hand up to the remaining shards of her left horn. She poked them lightly with her fingers, and then drifted them over to her curly right horn, which she then ran her fingers down.

"Will it grow back?" Mion asked as she looked at what remained of the goddess's left horn.

"I don't think so," replied Rion. "It smashed a long time ago, and I'm a spirit and don't grow."

_Oh yeah. _Mion gazed up and down Rion's body. If she grew, then she might as well be an old woman. However, the girl looked as if she couldn't be a day older than nine or ten. Most animals tended to regrow their horns if they fell off, though Mion doubted it would if Rion didn't grow and was just a spirit. Not that it really mattered. If she had horns, she was sure she would do everything in her power to hide them. The last thing she wanted was people to see them and to label her a monster of some sort.

"I don't mind, though," Rion said with a smile on her face. "I never liked my horns, anyways. People always think I'm a demon because of them, but that's not true! Demons are nasty and evil, and I'm certainly not nasty and evil. That's probably why everyone thinks that Oyashiro is a monster." She looked down at the ground and frowned, sorrow and pain in her dark green eyes. "I don't like being called a monster. Monsters are scary and I don't like them."

She could definitely understand that. Anyone with horns couldn't be human and would be instantly assumed to be some sort of monster, and Mion had actually thought the same when she first saw her. However, she knew better now. Rion was just a goddess, though she wasn't too sure why she had the horns. Maybe it was a sign of godhood?

"But it's okay! You're the only one that can see me, and you don't think I'ma monster!" she said cheerfully. Then, she turned to Mion, the cheerful expression almost faded and replaced by a look of worry. "…Do you?"  
>Rion's eyes shone with worry in them, and the hurt in them definitely showed. This caused Mion to wonder just how many people labeled Rion as a monster over the many years, and just how many people had hurt her. She knew that Rion hated being called a monster and that she hated being yelled at, so all those things people must have said definitely would hurt. Rion was a spirit now, but she had once been a member of the Sonozaki family. There had to be many who called her a monster during her years alive.<p>

"If you're my ancestor, though, how come you look like a kid?" Mion asked, hoping that it didn't offend the goddess.

"Because of the fact that we distribute power amongst ourselves. We don't have enough to maintain what we looked like when we died, so we stay as children because it doesn't use as much power," Rion looked at her reflection a little more, studying it for a bit. "But I don't mind! I like it a lot more like this. And if it means saving some of my power and using it for other things, then I'm okay!"

Mion smiled at the girl. She may not look her age, but she did act it. Maybe the distribution of power and staying in child form did that to her.

"So the other Oyashiros do that, too?" Mion asked.

Rion nodded. "Yeah, the Furude Oyashiro is in child form and the Kimiyoshi Oyashiro did that when she was still alive. None of us mind it, though!"

She was definitely carefree for a goddess who was labeled as being evil. Well, perhaps not completely carefree. She spoke with fear and worry when she mentioned being labeled as evil and being yelled at by people, and the idea that Oyashiro was evil still ran strong, even in this world. She wondered if Oyashiro-sama's curse was talked about in this world, but she doubted it seeing as Satoshi's aunt wasn't killed and it appeared that no one else was killed during the night of the Watanagashi this year.

Well, there was Uncle Kurou, but he hadn't died on the night of the Watanagashi. She didn't think it counted as Oyashiro-sama's curse unless it happened on the night of the Watanagashi. That was the defining characteristic and legend, after all.

Speaking of Uncle Kurou, she wondered how things had been doing in the investigation recently. She hadn't heard any new news from Shion, so she assumed that things were just as they were, with the police wondering just what had happened and with them desperately searching for _some_ kind of evidence or hint as to who had done it.

Rion turned towards the door. "Oh! Your sister is coming," she said. Just as she finished those words and before Mion had time to say anything back, the spiritual girl faded away.

Just as Rion had said, the door opened, revealing the figure of her sister, still clad in her night clothing.

"Shion, are you going to eat?" she asked. "You didn't come to the table at all. I was worried."

Mion shook her head. "Nah, I'm not hungry this morning," she replied. "Besides, it's almost time for school." Mion pointed to the clock to prove her point.

Shion's eyes grew wide as she noticed the time, and a hand went to her mouth. "Oh crap!' she yelled out. She ran to the wardrobe and pulled out her school clothing in a rush, dropping it all into a messy pile. "We're going to be late!" she cried.

The younger twin smiled at her sister. "Now whose fault is that going to be?" she asked teasingly.

Shion gave her a humorous glare before returning to her clothing, which she began to put on in a rush.

_I wonder what kind of things we're going to do today_ Mion thought.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Thankfully, the twins weren't late, but they came very close. It wasn't even thirty seconds after the two of them sat down that Chie walked in and began to given them the morning lectures. As usual, class opened up with Mion being told by Chie that she absolutely _had_ to finish that review packet from a while ago, and Mion was ready to ignore it and continue on with her day as she usually did. However, it didn't take her long to realize that Chie was turning to watch her every five minute or so to make sure that she was doing her work, and Mion quickly realized that she had to actually do something this class.

She didn't know what to make of the work, though, and how to do quite a bit of it. Actually, that wasn't it. What she had seen seemed odd to her, but she had barely even scanned through what was written on the sheet. Well, what she had seen was actually quite easy; it was just that she couldn't remember. The work that Chie was having her do was things that she had learned long ago. After moving her way through a unit, Mion didn't bother to try to remember anything she had just learned and dropped the memories of doing it and how to do it as quick as she possibly could. Perhaps she wouldn't be having as much trouble as she was had she not done that.

Mion looked down at the sheet and sighed. She instantly felt Chie's glare on her, and when she did, she began to scribble some random things down on her paper. They weren't answers, just some random doodles to make it look like she was actually bothering to do her work. When Chie's glare disappeared, Mion looked up at the class around her. Everyone else was engulfed in their work, for the most part. There were many who were slaking off as they realized Chie wasn't watching them, but there were also many who were trying hard.

Mion looked to her friends. Keiichi was reading a book that had been assigned to him, and Shion was falling asleep in her chair. Satoshi was staring at his science textbook as he scanned through the words written in it, a troubled look on his face. Rika was at the front of the classroom and was currently molding some figures of animals and placing them on a piece of cardboard, trying to make an art project of some sort. Satoko was doing some math problems, and as usual, wasn't having any trouble with it. If she was, then she certainly wasn't showing it.

She watched as Keiichi stuck his bookmark in his book and closed it shut, supposedly done with the chapter that had been assigned to him. An idea lit up in Mion's head at that moment. If he was done with that homework, then maybe she could pull him aside to help her again. It was often that he did so in her world, but he had only helped her a few times in this one. He wouldn't mind helping her again, would he?

Mion practically jabbed him in the stomach, causing him to yelp. The whole classroom turned to look at him, a confused look on their faces. Some of them narrowed their eyes at them, seemingly annoyed and angry that they had interrupted them.

"What was that for?" Keiichi cried.

Mion shrugged. "I had to get your attention somehow. I was intending it to be that hard or for you to scream like that, so sorry."

"That was embarrassing! Everyone was giving me this really nasty look," Keiichi spoke. "I thought that they were going to eat me alive or something!" He shook his head as if to remove the image of all the children glaring at him angrily out of his mind. "Anyway, what did you want?"

Mion pointed to her math homework and said nothing.

"Having trouble again?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'm on an entirely new section this time, and it's a little bit harder."

Keiichi scooted his chair over to her side and looked over her shoulder, quickly scanning through the work. A smile lit up on his face when he saw it. "Ah, this isn't too hard and shouldn't take too long." He pointed to the first problem on the page. "You know what this is, right?"

Mion nodded. "I know, it's an angle puzzle. You find the measurements of the angles…"

"Good. Now, what's the measurement of angle two over here…" Keiichi pointed to the angle marked with the number two. "…If the measurement of the angle right next to it is fifty-five degrees?"

That was an easy one. Anyone could figure that one out. "…They're complimentary, so they add up to ninety degrees. That means the angle is thirty-five." Mion scribbled down the number thirty-five next to the number two. "That was easy, though. I knew how to do that by myself."

"Of course you did, I didn't doubt that you knew the answer to that one." Keiichi pointed to another angle. "So if that one is thirty-five, what is measurement of angle number three?"

That was another easy one. Angle two and three were supplementary, meaning that they added up to a total of one hundred and eighty degrees. If angle two was thirty-five degrees, then that meant that angle three was one hundred and forty-five degrees. She wrote that down next to the number three.

"Okay, so as you can see, the answer to number four should be easy now," Keiichi said, pointing to angle four which Mion quickly solved.

"Okay, so now, let's go down. Here, we have a triangle." Keiichi circled the triangle with his pencil. "There's only one given measurement in the triangle right now…" He pointed to the top of the triangle, with the measurement of forty written on it. "And there's an angle next to it. It's next to angle five, as you can see. It's one hundred degrees."

"So the angle is eighty," Mion said. She wrote down the number eighty next to the number five. "And since triangles add up to one eighty, and eight plus forty is one hundred and twenty, that means the last angle is sixty. And since sixy is supplementary to this angle…" Mion pointed to the angle in question. "Then that angle is one hundred and twenty."

This was all easy stuff. Mion could have easily done this on her own. She never really had the motivation to, though.

"Then there's another angle that needs a measurement at the top of the triangle, under the line and next to the angle at the very top. The other one has an angle."

Mion quickly did that. It was too easy.

Keiichi nodded happily, a grin on his face. "Okay! Wow, you're doing well." He shot her his smile, causing her to blush and then try to hide the said blush. "Now that all the measurements are done, we get to go to the second part." He pointed down at the bottom of the angle puzzle. "This is a little trickier. Okay, so you have to give proof now. So what's proof that this is a triangle?"

Mion stared blankly at the sheet, and then to the question asking for proof that the triangle was indeed a triangle. "Because it looks like a triangle," she said.

Keiichi frowned. "Well yeah, it looks like a triangle because it is one, but you have to explain _why_ it is a triangle."

"It's a triangle because it looks like one," she replied stubbornly. "That's enough to prove that it's a triangle unless you're dumb and don't know what a triangle is." She really didn't want to get into this whole proof thing. It had always bothered her, and it was a long and tedious task.

Keiichi sighed. "Okay, so you see how these two lines on top of the triangle are parallel to each other? What—"

"Never mind, I don't feel like doing this," Mion said as she leaned back in her chair and shut the packet, cutting off Keiichi in the middle of his sentence.

"But Chie said that you have to!" protested Keiichi. "And you were doing so well, too."

"That's because the whole finding the angle measurements are easy!" Mion cried. "But this…" Mion flipped to the page in the packet they were just in, pointing to the section telling her that she had to give proof. "That's hard! I don't want to have to explain why this is a triangle! I don't see why you have to prove it, anyways. The answer is obvious. It's a triangle because it _looks like one!_ Who was the person who came up with the bright idea that people had to prove measurements, anyways? Isn't it enough to write the measurements and look at the shape of the triangle?" she complained.

She expected Keiichi to sigh at her complaints, but instead, he simply laughed at her. "Oh, Shion, that's just like you!" he cried out in laughter.

Mion couldn't help but grin a little. Shion was right. Whenever she behaved like herself, it caused a much more positive reaction from Keiichi. She enjoyed acting like herself a lot more, anyways. She didn't want to have to do this math work to impress him. It would be boring and she wasn't sure she wanted to make him think she was actually competent when it came to doing math. Then she would probably have to work even more when Chie saw how well she was doing and decided to give her harder things to challenge her.

"Yeah, I think that we shouldn't bother doing this sort of thing when we could be outside playing or something similar to that," Mion commented as she leaned further back in her chair, so that the front two legs were off the floor and her seat was in danger of falling. "Think about it! All the time that you've been spent proving stuff in geometry is now converted to time spent playing outdoors and talking to people. How much better is your life, now?"

Keiichi grinned. "Well, it would certainly be a lot more fun if that was the case…"

"Exactly! So that's why they should cut out things like proving things in geometry and spend more time in gym class. Some people in this world need more exercise, you know!" she cried out as loud as she could without catching Chie's attention. Thankfully, Chie had long ago been distracted from keeping an eye on Mion to make sure that she was doing her work. A boy who just couldn't seem to comprehend what Chie was telling him no matter how many times she repeated it was taking her time and attention, so she wouldn't be focusing on what the green-haired girl was doing. "At least we get a lot of time for gym in this school."

"Yeah, I like gym class, especially in this school because it's more like 'run around and do whatever you want' class. I mean… a few times where we play short games as a class, but that's about it. Even those are fun, though," Keiichi remarked.

"A lot more fun than geometry, right?" Mion replied.

"Yeah!"

The two of them burst out laughing to the point where Chie turned around and glared at them, realizing that Mion wasn't doing her work. She jumped and flipped the packet back open to the right page, beginning to scribble down some random things that definitely weren't the answers. When Chie turned back around, though, Mion looked at Keiichi. She tore off a little piece from the corner of her packet and began to scribble down a few words.

"_Are you doing anything after school?_" she wrote before passing the note over to the boy. Once again, Satoshi had to run home and do a few chores for his aunt and uncle, so he couldn't come on the walk with her. She was a little disappointed, as she had hoped to ask him about his feelings for Shion and if he had any in the first place. She was also hoping to explain her plans to Satoshi about bringing Satoko out of her shell. She had been going to do that today, but she had forgotten her cards at home, so that could wait until tomorrow.

He read the note and then scribbled something down, then passing the note back to Mion.

"_No, I'm not doing anything after school. Why?"_ he had written.

Mion smiled at the words and wrote back. _"No reason, really. I don't have anything to do after school and I was wondering if you could stay and talk to me."_ She really wanted to spend more time with the boy, and she was a little embarrassed about asking him like this. It wasn't because she wanted to draw them together, really. Rather, she just liked hanging out with him and figured that doing so would be a better use of her time than sitting around in her house. Besides, she had given up on the idea of pushing them together using her means in her head and decided to leave everything to fate to decide. Thinking about it too much wouldn't get her anywhere, as Shion had said.

Mion felt a little hesitant, pushed the note over to him, a little scared to hear his response. She could feel heat rise up to her cheeks and pounding in her heart, nervousness shaking through every fiber of her being. She wasn't even asking him out on a date, so why was she so embarrassed about this? They were just going to go sit around and talk, nothing else. It wasn't like they were going to kiss and do romantic things!  
>Keiichi wrote something down and pushed the note back.<p>

"_Sure! That sounds fun. It's better than reading that old book I bought myself to read when I have nothing to do, anyways."_

Mion grinned. It looked like her afternoon was going to be a little more eventful, now, even if it was just silly conversations they were going to have.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Just as the two of them had planned, after school, Keiichi and Mion found themselves sitting outside the school on a grassy patch of land, with the sun shining high in the sky. It wasn't late yet, and there was no signs of the sky changing into pink and yellow any time soon. For that reason, the two of them knew they could spend a long time relaxing without having to worry about getting home soon. No one would worry about them for a while.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Mion remarked as she lay down on her back, allowing the sun to warm her. "Even if it is a little hot…"

"As to be expected from July," Keiichi commented as he looked at the blue sky from his lying position. "But you know, August isn't actually that far away. And soon enough, it'll be autumn again, and the leaves will be falling off the trees…"  
>"Time really flies, huh?" Mion commented. This conversation wasn't going in a particular direction, but Mion didn't mind. She just wanted someone to talk to. She would allow the conversation to go wherever it wanted to, even if they ended up talking about useless things. "Just yesterday it seems like I was at home on my bed, dreaming of the day I would be allowed to move to Hinamizawa and meet the friends that my sister spoke about in the many letters she sent me."<p>

Keiichi grinned. "Doesn't it? But for some reason, I feel like I've known you for a long time, that you've been a part of this group forever. You don't feel new to me. You feel like an old friend."

_Yeah, but that's because I know you from another world_, Mion thought, but she obviously didn't speak those words out loud. "Really?" Mion asked. "I actually feel the same way. It's like we've been best friends since the beginning of time." She was actually glad to hear those words from Keiichi. He didn't view her as a complete stranger, then, and he didn't think she was new and that he had just met her.

"Haha, really, it does feel that way. I can't imagine what it would be like without you here, now. Things have changed a lot." He smiled gently. "Yeah, you add a whole new dynamic to our group of friends."

"And that's a good thing, right?" Mion asked, a little worried.

"Of course!" he replied right away, though he sounded a little frantic. Perhaps he felt bad after making that comment, as it seemed like he was saying something bad. "It's not a bad thing at all. I like you here."

"Do you…?" Mion asked, sitting up.

"Y-Yeah…"

Mion turned towards the boy, looking at his face. To her surprise, it had turned a bright pink, and he was looking away, trying to avoid eye contact with him. He looked quite embarrassed.

She felt her face grow warm too. Was Keiichi… blushing at her? She wanted to say something to respond to what he just said, to thank him for saying such a thing, but words would not come out of her throat. It was as if there was a huge boulder in her throat, blocking the words from coming out. Why was she so embarrassed over that compliment? And why was she so embarrassed that he had blushed at her? It didn't mean anything at all! Well, maybe it did, but it probably didn't! She should be able to speak easily, right? Then why weren't words coming out?

"Thanks," she choked out.

"Welcome," he responded, still avoiding eye contact with the girl.

Mion looked away as well. She didn't want him to see her blush, though she quickly wondered why she had looked why when he already was looking away. Perhaps it was because she was afraid that he would turn back around and start talking to her, that he would then see the obvious red on her face.

He did start talking again, but he instead faced the sky instead of her. "I mean—… Yeah, you're a good friend. It's really nice having you here and I'm glad you moved. I always like having new friends."

Mion smiled at him. "I'm glad that I moved here, too. My sister would always tell me about you guys and the village, and it sounded nice. I mean… I lived here when I was little, but I almost forgot how amazing this place is. It's a change from Okinomiya." Mion definitely didn't feel this way because she had not experienced that part of her life in this world, but she had to say it. That was who she was in this world, after all. "Yeah. I like this place, and you're a good friend of mine, too." She finally turned her head to face him, and he did the same when he noticed that she was looking at him.

Keiichi once again smiled gently. "Of course. And I like you too!"

Mion blinked at him, wondering if he had really said what she thought he had said. "Wh-What?" she stuttered.

Suddenly, his face turned redder than ever before, and his eyes widened. "I mean—! As a friend! I like you as a friend! We're good friends—! I-It's not like that, I swear!"

Mion's face turned even more red than it was before, if that was even possible in the first place. She didn't know how to respond to that, and so she didn't, and the two of them ended up staring at each other for a while with red faces, which only caused their blushes to intensify as they realized they were both blushing.

"I know what you meant, dummy!" cried Mion in desperation to find something to say. "It's not like that for me either! I swear!"

"Y-Yeah!"

She turned away from him again. This was certainly turning out different from what she had planned. She had just wanted to enjoy a nice conversation, and now suddenly, they were sitting there awkwardly with blushes on their faces. She knew she shouldn't be as embarrassed as she was. Keiichi didn't mean it like that. He really meant it when he said that what he had said before meant that he liked her as a friend, and not romantically. Still, she found herself blushing, her heart ponding wildly in her chest, and nervousness growing like never before.

_Why am I acting like this? Come on, turn around and talk to him!_ Mion wanted to pull herself over to face him again, but it was as if she had been chained to the ground. She could not find the courage to roll over and look into his eyes. _Come on, Mion! Come on! Why can't you do this?_ She began to turn over, but her heart sent a jolt through her body and she found herself looking away again. _Okay, if you can't do anything, say something._

"So, uh… nice weather, huh?" she commented.

"Y-Yeah. I like July days even though they're hot… but you know, it's going to be August soon, and then it'll be autumn, and the leaves will be falling off of the trees…" Keiichi replied shakily.

"Um… Kei-chan? You already said that," was all Mion could find the words to say.

"H-Huh? I did? When did I say that?" Keiichi asked.

"At the beginning of the conversation," Mion reminded him. "Remember? I said that it was hot, and you said that you liked July days…"

"Oh yeah, I did say that… S-Sorry… I wasn't thinking, I guess," Keiichi responded.

"No, it's okay… Sometimes things like that happen, right?" she replied.

"Huh? Y-Yeah, I guess…"

Mion couldn't help herself, now. She turned right over and looked at Keiichi, who was trying to avoid eye contact as well. When she sat up a little higher, she could see a little of his red face and his nervous eyes. For a second, Mion had to wonder if he was blushing because he liked her, but she tried to forget that right afterwards. _No, that's not it!_ She told herself that he was blushing because he was embarrassed over the fact that he had repeated himself, and decided to go with this explanation.

"So… uh…" She wanted to pick up the conversation. She had no idea what to talk about with him, though. Should she just say something random and hope that it sparked a conversation? Well, that was how most conversations started, anyway, and those always turned out to be the best of conversations. She quickly thought of something random. "I noticed that you were reading a book during class…"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I was," Keiichi replied.

"…Do you like reading?" She asked. She knew it was a random question and quite a dumb one at that, but she needed to start some kind of conversation.

"It's just an assigned book. I… I read sometimes, but not usually." Keiichi was still looking away, and Mion wondered why he still was doing so. She had lay down again, so she couldn't see his face. She was tempted to sit up again and get a good look, but he may get suspicious of why she was doing that so many times. "My mom sometimes has me read murder mystery books, though. She likes that kind of thing."

"…Oh?" she responded, not knowing what else to say.

"Yeah. I don't know why, though. I'm not too into murder mystery. I mean, I guess it could be interesting, but it's not my thing, you know?" Keiichi flipped himself over again so that he could look at her, perhaps finding it a little odd that they were not looking at each other but still talking. He was giving her a cheesy grin that for some reason caused another blush to ignite on her face.

_Why does this keep happening today! _Mion thought. _Damn it, Sonozaki Mion! Calm down. This is just a small conversation! It's not supposed to be like this. Just talk and stay calm!_

"Yeah, I guess I know what you mean. I don't read too much, so…"

"I think you should. I'm not too much of a reader, but it can be fun sometimes," Keiichi replied. "You know how it is. Some books are just better than others, and those ones tend to be the ones you can get into easily."

"Yeah. Maybe one day."

The conversation died again, and Mion just found herself staring at his face. He blinked at her, confused, and she did the same. Their eyes met again, and as soon as she saw his blue eyes staring deeply into her own, her heart found itself in a race again. _N-Not again! You can't let this happen! Quick, revive the conversation and you can avoid all this!  
><em>"So, nice weather… huh?" Mion said.

"Yeah," Keiichi replied. "July days are kind of hot, but I like them. You know, it's going to be August soon, and then it's going to be autumn, and before you know it, the leaves will start to—…" He stopped. "Wait, I just said that, didn't I?"

"Y-Yes…" Mion replied.

"Oh…"

The conversation once again stopped, and they were staring at each other again. Mion, not knowing what to do and allowing her body to do whatever it wanted, began to gaze at his body. He was quite handsome and cute in her opinion, though she had to wonder if others felt the same about him. His sense of style wasn't that great and his clothing was rather boring, but she had none either and couldn't judge it at all, so she didn't mind one bit. His brown hair was often messy and not well combed, and it seemed to be the same today. There were locks sticking up in some places and strands that were going into his eyes just a little. Mion had to admit, it made him look a little more attractive if anything. She caught his blue eyes again, and lost herself in them. They were such a beautiful blue color, like sapphires. She just looked at them for a while, admiring how beautiful they were.

It took her a while to realize that she was staring, and then took her a little longer to realize that he was staring, too.

"S-Sorry!" Mion quickly yelled out without thinking. "I—…didn't… I mean I didn't… I mean sorry! I wasn't doing that!"

Keiichi jumped out of his daze. "Ah—!" he yelled. "And I wasn't staring—… what? What did you say?"

The two of them just looked at each other in awkward silence for a while, looks of confusion painted on their faces. They blinked at each other, not knowing what to say to each other.

Mion felt her heart pick up pace again, and her cheeks once again returned to a red color. It seemed as if her cheeks had been red during this conversation more than they had been their normal color. She had no idea what was going on with her anymore, and had no idea what was going on with him either. What was wrong with her today? Why couldn't she just keep up a conversation? She felt her whole body begin to tremble with nervousness from being so close, from being caught staring, from just all that had happened around him. It made her heart begin to race at an uncomfortable pace, and she could no longer look at him. The embarrassment was too much.

"I got to go!" she cried out. "I just remembered I have to cook the garden and water my dinner! I mean…! I have to cook my dinner and water the garden!"

He blinked in confusion. "H-Huh? Don't you have servants?" he asked.

"Oh…! I…I… yeah, but my grandmother said it would be good for me to practice more! Anyways!" Mion stood up as quick as she could and grabbed her bag, throwing it over her shoulder. She got another look at him, at his confused face, and felt her heart begin to go into a dangerously fast pace. She felt so nervous being around him that her body felt like it was going to collapse onto the ground at any second and that it would stop her heart in its racing all together. She looked away as fast as she could. "Yeah, I'm sorry I forgot! Anyways, let's talk again some other time…! See you at school! Bye!"

She ran away from there as fast as she could, not wanting to stay there another second. She didn't want to die from the embarrassment that was quaking through her body, and she didn't want it to grow stronger when he noticed.

_What is wrong with me today?_ She wondered. _Just what is wrong with me today?_

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Got to make this short or I'll never get to watch Mirai Nikki before I have to go to bed. Actually, I don't have much to say, so it will be short anyways. I got this uploaded on Sunday as promised, and I hope that I'm actually getting back into my normal schedule. I'll try to update Tuesday, but we'll have to see how that goes over. I hope that I can! I'm hoping that I can really do three chapters a week instead of two. That would really pick up the pace of my uploading and this story. It makes me really worried that I'm not going to finish in time, and the last thing I want to do is leave you hanging.**

**I'm actually really scared I won't finish this in time. It's a horrifying thought :(. And I thought I gave myself enough time with this fanfiction! Maybe I'm just overacting. Maybe I'm just being panicky because of how Mion was in the last scene (how does that work, anyways?). Okay, I need to calm down. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, the KeiMi, and the rest. I love writing scenes between Mion and Keiichi. Those kinds of scenes are always my favorites. You know, that's because I like KeiMi, but...**

**(See you Tuesday?)**

**~Crimso**


	16. Chapter 15: Cards

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Ugh. I'm in a terrible mood right now. We got the thing we needed to fix my Wii today… but it ended up not working and the damn thing is still broken. Now we're just going to have to get a new one, which involves spending a lot of money. Also, the saved data is stored on the Wii, so I have to start all my games over from the beginning like I have never touched them before. For a second time, since my Wii broke before. **_**Great.**_

**Note: Yeah… a lot of people are saying that Mion and Keiichi just met so it would be odd for him to like her already, but it has been a few weeks, and they interact more than is being shown, and in the actual Higurashi series, Mion's only known Keiichi for three weeks and still likes him. Just… keep that in mind.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Fifteen: Cards_

The beginning of school had gone by again, and it was now time for lunch. During work period, Mion had once again started up on trying to finish up that math packet Chie had been expecting her to finish for the longest time now. She went by geometry with a ton of trouble and a few questions here and there not answered, but when she got to the next section, she had given up completely. She spent the rest of her period leaning back in her seat and dreaming about anything that came to her head.

The topic of what had happened the day before had come to her mind. Mion wondered just what had been wrong with her yesterday, and why she had been so embarrassed around Keiichi. Okay, so she knew that she liked him, but why should yesterday have been any different from usual? She was never like that around him. She found it a little awkward to interact with him now, even today. She didn't want to ask him for help for some reason out of embarrassment and slight worry that he would bring up the topic of what had happened yesterday.

When their eyes did meet, though, she would blush and quickly look away. _No... that's not it. _Even that wasn't accurate. They would _both_ blush and look away. Was he embarrassed about the incident that had happened yesterday, or…?

Mion shook her head. No, she shouldn't finish that thought. He probably didn't like her. It was just embarrassment from yesterday. That was all.

"Are you sure about that?" Rion asked, sensing Mion's thoughts. "I think you're being too negative with yourself… I think that he may like you."

_I doubt that…_ Mion sighed. As much as Rion tried to convince her during these times, it didn't really ever pick up her mood. It was just too much for her at times, and the feeling that he didn't like her was sometimes just too strong. She wanted to believe Rion, to think that he really liked her to cheer herself up, but she highly doubted that that was the case.

"Please, Mion, you have to listen to me," Rion said with a concerned face. "Listen, okay? Good! Now, you can't go thinking that he doesn't like you or anything like that because it won't do you any good. What if he does?"  
><em>He doesn't<em>… Mion thought bitterly.

"…Then you'll never be able to get to him. And then nothing will ever get better. You want this to be a perfect world, right?" she reminded her with a gentle smile on her face. "If you want this to be a perfect world, then you want Keiichi by your side, right? Then you can't go thinking negatively, or you'll never get him, this world will never be perfect, and you'll never be happy about being stuck here!"

Rion was right in a sense. If she wanted this world to be perfect to make up for losing her old one, which she had treasured oh so much, then she would have to get Keiichi to like her and perhaps date her. That was one of the only things that could make her feel better about losing her world, really. The whole thought of having lost that old world where all her friends were waiting for her, and in the process losing her own identity had really impacted her. She had lived in that world all her life and had learned to love the people in it and who she was, even if she did bear a huge regret of having taken her sister's identity.

But things were happier in this world, she reminded herself. Even if Rena was gone, she was happy back where she was. She didn't have to go through the horrors that had afflicted the Rena of her world, which had caused her to move in the first place. Even if Satoko was a jerk, she was happy being a jerk. That was who she was and she was fine with the idea of having no friends, even if she didn't know how wonderful it could be. Even if Rika was different, she was happy being different and having no knowledge of those horrors Rion had described to Mion, about having to travel through hundreds of worlds and having to see her friends die thousands of times in front of her very own eyes. Even if Shion had her identity in this world, she could live happier. And even if she had a different identity… well, she didn't mind too much. Seeing her sister happy with who she was and her position was enough. Satoshi was fine, too. He was here and well, and that was all that mattered really.

She had to keep telling herself this whenever she missed her old world. She would picture what Rion had showed her before, of those images of them so happy and well. They had not experienced what she had seen in her world. They were happy to lose their biggest regret.

Though there were some problems. She really did want Satoko to lighten up and join her group, even if she was fine with being a jerk. Of course, Mion had promised Satoshi before that she would help the girl out and fix her, then convincing her to join in with the group and become good friends with her. She had not forgotten this today, and was ready to take her little plan into action.

She reached into her back and took out a deck of cards, holding them under the table so to not ruin the surprise for anyone. Absentmindedly, she began to shuffle the deck with extreme speed.

As she was doing this, Satoshi began to eye Satoko. The others noticed this, but none of them said anything or tried to stop him from paying attention to his younger sister. Slowly, and as expected, the boy got up from his seat and wandered over to his younger sister.

The whole table was silent, so luckily Mion was able to hear the conversation that the two of them began.

"Come on, Satoko," Satoshi begged. "Just this once, okay? If you don't like it, you don't have to eat with us again."

Satoko didn't respond to that at all, simply shutting her eyes and giving him a stubborn "humph!" She took out her bento box and chopsticks and slowly began to eat, ignoring her brother completely and showing no signs of replying to her brother's words from a little while ago. It seemed that the boy was hoping she would, as he stared there with a somewhat patient expression on his face, but he was beginning to lose it as the time went by.

When a minute or two went by, Satoshi realized his sister really wasn't going to respond to his question. He let out a deep sigh and shook his head. "Do I really have to explain to you again? You're missing out on a ton of fun. I've told you about the times I've spent with my friends before. We always have nice conversations and everyone is included. Everyone is happy as friends and none of us fight or argue, at least most of the time. It's all nice and peaceful," he told her gently. "I'm sure that you'll like it."

"I know," replied Satoko after swallowing her food. "You have told me about it a thousand times, and I've told you about a thousand times more that I don't care! I don't think that it's any fun and I don't think everything is as you say it is. Besides, if everything was nice and peaceful, why did _she _try to hit me with a chair?" Satoko asked, pointing an accusing finger at a surprised Shion.

"That was one time. Come on, Satoko… Mion's a good person, really. She just wanted you to join in and was a little frustrated that you didn't want to. It goes to show how much she wants you to have fun with us, right?" Satoshi gave his sister a reassuring smile, the same one he would always wear whenever he had this conversation with his sister. It wasn't like giving that smile was going to change anything. If it were going to, then things would have been different a long time ago.

Satoko rolled her eyes. "So trying to beat someone up is a sign of friendliness now? Right. I don't care or know about friends other than the fact that they're dumb and pointless, but I'm pretty sure that trying to beat someone up is the opposite of being friendly." Satoko kicked her feet up on the desk next to her food, leaning back in her chair. "And I personally don't want to be beaten up, thank you very much."

Mion looked to her sister, who seemed less than amused that Satoko was saying such things about her. It was true that Shion could lose her temper at times, but she was not a bad person. The one time where she had tried to beat Satoko with a chair was the only time it had happened in this world, and would be the only time. Shion had learned her lesson. Of course, looking at her expression now, one would assume that the thoughts of doing such a thing were spiraling in her head, but Mion knew better. Shion would never do such a thing again, especially after seeing how Satoshi reacted to her doing it. She had done something similar in the old world and certainly never tried it again, and that was enough for Mion to know that her sister wouldn't attempt to do something like beat Satoko up, especially if the two were to become friends.

"Stop it, Satoko. Mion is a good person. She just lost her temper once," Satoshi said. "I told you a lot about her, haven't I? Mion is a good friend of mine. She's sweet, kind, caring, and she would love having you around. She's one of my best friends."

Shion now seemed rather pleased; especially after hearing what the boy she liked thought about her.

"Well, I guess you have a poor choice in friends, then. I think she would be the last person I would chose to be my friend if I even wanted them in the first place." She shut her eyes and relaxed further into her seat. "Which I don't want, and something I won't ever want." Satoko pointed to the table containing her brother's friends. "Now go eat your lunch. I want to enjoy eating lunch but I can't when you're bothering me with this nonsense."

Satoshi sighed, looking defeated. Mion knew it wouldn't be the last straw for him, though. He would come back again and ask her to join tomorrow, and the whole process would repeat. Well, that was how it would be, anyways, if she hadn't brought her quite literal trump card.

Mion jumped up from her seat and wandered over to where the two of them were standing, and when Satoko caught her gaze, she narrowed her eyes.

"Oh, it's Mion's clone. I'm guessing you're going to beat me with a chair, too?" she asked. Then, she closed her eyes again and returned to her relaxing position, her face painted with a mocking smirk. "Well, you go ahead and do that. I don't care. Even if I don't particularly _like_ being beaten, I can still take it. It won't leave a scratch on me."

Mion whispered under her breath that she was not a clone of her sister and that she wasn't here to beat her up, finding it a little annoying that her words implied that she thought that Mion was just her sister with the minor difference of clothing and hair. She shook off any annoyances she had, though. In order to do this, she had to be nice and cheerful, even if she was facing her old friend turned into a real jerk, who was constantly throwing insults and snarky remarks. If Satoko responded badly to this, she would just try again. There was no way that she could fail.

Mion grabbed an unused chair and pulled it over in front of Satoko's desk. She then plopped herself down. "Hey, Houjou Satoko, is it? I've never really talked to you before. I'm Sonozaki Shion! Nice to meet you."

"I know who you are," Satoko said with annoyance. "Mion's clone or twin or whatever you call it. As I said before, I don't care about being beaten with chairs, so you don't have to pull that again." The use of again bothered Mion, and it quickly occurred to Mion that Satoko was assuming that she and Shion were practically the same person, that the only difference was that they had separate yet identical bodies.

"I never beat you up with a chair," Mion said with the best grin she could put on her face. "That was my sister."

"You, your sister, same exact thing," Satoko grumbled. "Now could you leave me alone?"

Mion couldn't help but feel a little annoyed at her attitude. "And what makes you think that we're the same person?" Mion asked her, still maintaining her cheerful voice and attitude.

"You look the same and basically have the same name," Satoko replied, annoyance in her tone.

_Because your name doesn't sound like Satoshi's at all_ Mion thought sarcastically. "Well, okay, sure. Think what you want," she said to finish up the topic. She placed her deck of cards on the desk, grinning widely at the girl. "Hey, Satoko, won't you come and join us for a quick conversation? Just a quick one. Come on, maybe you'll like it!"

Satoko scoffed. "No," she replied. "Perhaps you don't me well enough, Sonozaki Mion-san—… Oh, sorry, I mean _Shion_-san," she said, though Mion highly doubted that she had actually made that mistake. It was probably just to annoy her, though the mistake had been made too many times for real for it to have an actual effect. "But if there is one thing you _have_ to know about me… it's that I'm not pathetic and weak like everyone else in this classroom. I can take care of myself and the last thing I need is _friends_." She practically spat out that last word, like it was disgusting on her tongue. "Know that and you'll get along just fine! Now go, you're making my stomach wait longer. I can't eat this lunch while being disturbed. It's too good for me not to enjoy every bite of it." She pointed to the finely made lunch on her desk, which was getting colder and colder by the second.

Satoshi gave Mion a concerned look, silently telling her that it was okay and that she didn't need to try. However, she just winked at him, telling him that she knew what she was doing.

"Okay, so how about this…" Mion picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle them again, flipping through each card in the deck with such speed it would be impossible to keep track of. "If you're so could, you can beat me at this game, right? If you beat me, then I'll leave you alone. But if I win, you have to come and sit with us. Got it?"

Satoko raised a hand held flat in the air, practically pushing it into Mion's face. "Sorry Sonozaki Number Two, but I don't want to play. I've got a perfectly good meal waiting for me."

"Well then, I guess I'll stay here and bother you forever and you'll never get to eat your lunch anyway," Mion said casually, placing an elbow down on the table and using her hand to cup her cheek in.

Satoko grumbled and said nothing. If she didn't play, then she wouldn't ever get to eat her lunch. It was the perfect plan, Mion thought. Even if she did lose, it didn't matter. At least Satoko would have had some interaction with someone. It would be good for her to win, though. Getting Satoko to sit down with the club and talk a little may open her eyes up to how much fun friends could be, even if she didn't say anything.

"Fine then," growled Satoko. "What are the rules? And be quick about it, I want to eat!"

"Fine." Mion reached out for the deck and swiped a few cards from the top of the deck. She looked at them, showing the back of them to Satoko. "Okay, so I have five cards here in my hand. Guess which cards I'm holding and you win. If you don't guess them all, you lose."

"That's hardly any fair!" Satoko yelled out. "They could be any card and there's a ton of different cards in the deck! There is no way that I'll be able to guess them correctly!"

Mion smirked at her. "Oh? Aren't you the great Houjou Satoko, can't you do anything?" she said tauntingly. "I guess not, then! Maybe you're just weak and don't like to admit it."

This was definitely enough to invoke a reaction from the girl. "I am not weak!" she yelled out. "I can do anything and everything!"

"Oh? Well then, guess them!" cried Mion.

Satoko clenched her teeth, realizing what a tricky situation she had gotten herself into. She tapped her fingers on the desk in annoyance as she thought hard about what she should guess. They could be any five cards from the deck, and in fact, there could be cards that were the same! Mion knew that there was no way that Satoko could win this one. There was a slight chance, sure, but she highly doubted it.

"Er… the first one is a five of hearts, the second is a six of spades, the third is a three of diamonds, the fourth is a king of hearts, and the fifth is a nine of clubs! There!" cried Satoko, though she definitely sounded unsure about her answers. "I win, now leave me alone! I can hear my lunch getting colder by the second!"

Mion smirked and turned the cards around. "I'm afraid that you didn't get a single one right! I guess you were kind of close on the third one, though. That's a two of diamonds, not a three." She grinned triumphantly. "I guess that means that you have to come over and eat lunch with us now!"

"No it doesn't!" shouted Satoko as she returned to a normal sitting position. She snatched up her lunch and drew it close to her, glaring at Mion. "The game wasn't fair in the first place and I was never going to win. Therefore, you cheated and lose, so I win! Now go off and eat your lunch, I know I'm eager to eat mine!"

"Yes it does. And nowhere in the rules did it say that doing such a thing was cheating. The only rules were that you were supposed to guess and if you lost, you sat with us, and if you won, you didn't," Mion reminded her. She put the cards back into the deck, shuffling them in. "And you lost, so you have to obey the rules and sit with us."

"Will you leave me alone?" she yelled.

Mion was about to respond, but Satoshi gently placing her hand on her shoulder stopped her right in her tracks. She looked over to the boy, who just shook his head slowly. "It's okay, Shion. You did the best you could do. I-I'm glad that you tried to help out…" he told her softly. "So you can sit down and eat lunch now."

"Yeah, and leave me alone," Satoko commented as she reached for some vegetables with her chopsticks, then plopping them in her mouth and slowly chewing them.

"Okay, let's make a compromise," Mion said as she turned towards the girl, deciding not to listen to Satoshi. "I leave you alone to eat your lunch today, and tomorrow you come and eat with us. Okay?"

"Okay!" cried Satoko, annoyance in her tone. "Sure, fine, whatever! I'm trying to enjoy a perfectly good lunch here!"

"Good," Mion said, a triumphant smile on her face. Satoko was now in a situation that she couldn't get out of. She had to eat with them now, and then she would perhaps see what friendship could be. She would have to open her heart with games more, though. That was what had healed Satoko in her world, so it should work in her own. Games were a specialty of Satoko's, after all.

Things were going all according to plan.

_~~~~X~~~~_

"That's it, class is dismissed!" cried Chie.

With that, the kids grabbed their bags and burst from their seats, running out the door with the speed of a cheetah. Chie was just about nearly knocked over as she tried to make her way to the door, but all she did after regaining her balance was simply sigh. It wasn't like this kind of thing didn't happen often to her. The rush of kids was no different, and while she didn't tend to get blown over often, she was pretty much used to that, too.

Mion glanced to her side, watching as Keiichi packed his things away. She wished to get another chance to talk to him as she had screwed it up pretty badly last time. She wondered just what had gone wrong in that conversation, and where she had gone wrong. Perhaps she just felt a little more distracted than usual that day.

Keiichi glanced back and caught her gaze. The two of them didn't say anything to each other, and once again just stared. Mion almost lost herself in his blue eyes again as she enjoyed how beautiful the color of them were and just how good his whole face looked, but she soon realized this and broke out of her trance. Keiichi blushed and looked away from her, trying as hard as he could not to look her straight in the eye again. It would just cause the whole situation to repeat again.

He packed up his things and was soon out the door, and Mion sighed. Well, maybe some day she would be able to talk to him and apologize for what had happened. She would have to wait until she wasn't feeling so distracted, though, otherwise the same thing would just happen again and the apology would become worthless.

Besides, she had something else to do today.

"Satoshi-kun?" Mion called to the blonde-haired boy, who was still packing his things up. "Are you going anywhere today, or…?"

He looked away from his things briefly to shake his head. "No, I'm free today. You?"

"Yeah, I'm free." That meant that the two of them were going to go on their usual walk and chat. Mion was glad, as she had been hoping that he would be free so that she could do what she had been intending to do all day.

When Satoshi was all packed up, they left the building and went on their usual route, towards the forest. The two of them, like usual, didn't start right away with a conversation but instead in their own thoughts. While Mion and Keiichi's relationship had been progressing slowly, so was Shion and Satoshi's relationship. Mion wondered why Shion hadn't asked him out already if she had known him for so long. She loved him so much and she wasn't really afraid of that kind of thing, unlike Mion. So why hadn't their relationship changed?

Mion felt like it was her duty to get to the bottom of this and bring the two of them together. Shion had been so helpful with giving Mion advice before, so it was only nice of her to return the favor. Besides, if Mion wanted a world that was truly perfect, then she needed Satoshi and Shion to have a stable and nice relationship. It would really make Shion happier than anyone else in the whole world, and Mion loved to see her sister so happy.

She didn't know how Satoshi felt about the girl, and that was what she had been intending to ask all day. She could have asked him in school, but with his seat next to Shion's, it was unlikely that she wouldn't overhear their conversation. With the two of them all alone, it would work better, and maybe she would get a better answer out of Satoshi, who may be afraid to admit it with a lot of people in the room.

"So, Satoshi-kun…" Mion started up.

"…Thanks for today," Satoshi said before Mion could even start the topic of his relationship with Shion. "Really, I mean it. I don't think she's actually going to sit with us, though, but at least you tried a different approach…"

Well, they could talk about this, too. That was another thing she wanted to talk about with him, anyways. The part about Shion could wait for a little while longer. "Even if she doesn't sit with us, it's okay. I think that she needed the kind of interaction like playing cards." It was highly possible that Satoko wouldn't sit, but Mion knew inside that she had made progress. "You see, it's not really social interaction when it's cards… but cards can draw her out and make her want to play with us, you know?"

Satoshi nodded. "I know. I think Satoko would like those kinds of games… I think she would be good at them, too," he replied.

Of course she would be good at them, this was Satoko they were talking about. Satoshi would never know, though, that his sister was actually extremely competitive in another world and that she was a really good player of cards. She was next to Mion in the number of games won, though that was still a pretty small number due to the fact that Mion usually won all of the games. If that side existed in another world, why not in this world? Deep down inside, Mion was sure that Satoko was the same as the one she knew.

"I think so, too. That was just a kind of game to get her to try to talk with us, though. I don't think she would be too interested in playing guessing games," Mion replied. Indeed, simply guessing cards was no fun, but that hadn't been the intention this time around. "But I'll teach her a few card games and she'll start to love that kind of thing, and soon enough, maybe she'll want to play with us a little more and start interacting. Maybe then she'll realize how close friends can be, and that we're not bad people."

"I'm sorry about the things she said, by the way," Satoshi replied. "I guess because she's never really had friends or gotten to know the way people and personality work because of that, she doesn't know that you're a different person from Mion. Since you look alike, she's assuming that you're the same on the inside, too." He sighed and shook his head, a look of shame on his face. "I know you two are different, but in her mind, you two must be the same people. I guess that's why she assumed you wanted to beat her with a chair."

Mion shrugged. "It's fine, really. A lot of people make that assumption about identical twins." A lot of people she and Shion had known had first seemed to assume the same, but eventually realized that they were separate people and had separate personalities despite the fact that they looked identical and had similar names. Even in this world her friends had started by comparing her to her sister and seeing how different she was from her and what parts of her were the same.

The two of them weren't completely different from each other, but they certainly did have their differences that made them distinct. Those differences were something that people wouldn't assume at first glance, though. Well, sure they had different outfits and all, but if they were identical twins, a lot of people's first thoughts were that they were probably the same or at least very similar in personality

"She kind of labels people as what she knows them by from what they've said and done to her. She doesn't pay attention to what other people say to other people and what other people do when they aren't interacting with her," Satoshi explained to the girl. "So she remembers Mion mostly by the fact that she tried to hit her with a chair once, and I guess because you're twins and all she knows about you is that you are identical in appearance to your sister, she assumed that you would also beat her with a chair. And it's the same with a lot of people… the only thing she knows Rika by is the fact that she keeps insisting on playing with her, and with Keiichi it's that one time he tried to introduce himself to her…"

Mion could understand that. Without really getting to know people and having little social interaction, Satoko would probably make assumptions like that. That's why Mion could easily forgive her for saying the things that she had said. She hadn't minded in the first place, really.

"Onee isn't the type of person to hit someone with a chair, really. She loses her temper sometimes but otherwise, she's a great sister," Mion said, recalling the image of her sister standing above Satoko with anger like no one had ever seen before in her eyes, firmly grasping onto that chair and preparing to bring it down on the poor girl. That was definitely not the only time she had been so violent when angry, but if Mion were to try to list the times, she would probably spend all day and still not finish listing them.

"Of course not, Mion is a sweet person. She does tend to lash out at times, yeah, but otherwise…" Satoshi looked a little concerned still, the thought of what his sister had been saying before probably still floating around in his head.

Mion knew this was her chance. "So, what do you think about my sister?" she asked him.

Satoshi looked at Mion and smiled. "Well, I think I told you already… I don't think she's a bad person, and I think that's she's really nice and sweet. She's one of my good friends, and I wish Satoko would recognize her for that," he responded.

This wasn't anything new at all. He had said that in the classroom, when he was convincing Satoko to come sit down with him and his friends.

"Is that it?" Mion asked.

"Well, no. I could go on about the reasons why she's my good friend, but I think we'd be here all day, and my aunt and uncle wouldn't enjoy that." He cracked a tiny smile at his joke, though it wasn't really too funny to joke about his abusive aunt and uncle in the first place. "But yes, Mion is my good friend for many reasons and I enjoy being around her."

Was that really it, then? Did Satoshi really just feel like Shion was a good friend and nothing else, or was he hiding it?

"Do you like her?" Mion asked.

"Of course, that's what I just said," Satoshi responded, not picking up on what Mion really meant by that question.

"No, that's not what I meant," Mion replied quickly. "I mean that if you liked her as in _liked_ liked her."

Satoshi looked shocked and confused by the question. "Huh? What? Like _like_ her?" he asked, as if to confirm if she had indeed just asked that. It was rhetorical question, though, and he went on "Well, I like her, but just as a friend. I don't really feel that way towards anyone right now."

_It really is that way, then?_ That made things way too complicated. Mion had been hoping that the boy harbored some secret romantic feelings for her sister, but it appeared that that wasn't the case and he really just thought of her as a friend. Mion wanted to do something about this, to make him feel the same way as her sister did… but she had no idea how to do that. If he had liked her, then she could simply push them together by suggesting he ask her out, but since he didn't, she would have to create feelings… somehow. But how was she going to do that? She didn't even know how to deal with her own feelings towards Keiichi! There was now way she could help her sister if she didn't even know what to do in the first place.

But there had to be some way, right?

…Well, there was nothing that came to mind, anyway. What was she going to do? The only thing she had been told was to act like herself around Keiichi and see what developed, and she couldn't help Shion with that. That was something she had to do by herself. Then was Shion on her own, then?

No. She would figure out something. It didn't matter _what_ it was, so long as the two of them got together. Then, perhaps, she would be a step closer towards a perfect world.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**AHAHA! I updated Tuesday night, like I had hoped and promised! I wonder…. Why do I always tell you that I'll update Friday, Sunday, and Tuesdays, when I actually start writing around nine PM the same day (around twelve in Friday's case) and finish at midnight, when it's already the next day? I guess I should say "I update Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday," huh? Well, it feels like Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday for me. Anyway, I hope that I can keep this up. Three chapters a week is good, and it's more than what I was doing before, so I can get this done faster than BFB and hopefully before camp!**

**So… school has been going… okay. I just had a math test which I feel I did well on, but we'll see. My mom's really concerned about my grades and is pressuring me, and it's not doing anything to help. It just makes me feel worse, if anything. I hope that at least for the last quarter I can do well, as I've pretty much bombed my chances of doing well this quarter already. **

**Speaking of which, Spring Break is in three weeks. How exciting! My Spanish class is going on a trip to Puerto Rico, but I decided not to go because 1). I don't like tropical places (and I hate the beach!) 2). A lot of it is going to be spent doing Spanish work, and I'd rather not over my only break for the rest of the year 3). I don't want to be around the kids from my school 4). WAN, but to be honest if it weren't for the others, I would have gone even if I had this to do. I'm going nowhere, so it'll all be cool.**

**Also, this doesn't effect me as much as it does you, but… On March 1****st****, GED is going to be a year old. That's… amazing for me. It marks the one year anniversary fanfiction work and basically me as a writer for the most part. So since I'm probably not going to update then, Happy Birthday to Green-Eyed Demon! …That's odd that I'm saying this about my fanfiction. Oh, also, tomorrow is February 29****th****. Leap year. That's too cool. It won't happen again until 2016, so enjoy the day! How does that work, anyways? And sorry for the long Crimso's Corner V.3.**

**~Crimso**


	17. Chapter 16: Games

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I would ramble on here, but life has been a wreck and I don't want to talk about it right now, so let's skip.**

**Note: A lot more time is going by than I'm showing, just to let you know.**

**Note: I wish I knew more card games.**

**Note: I've done it before, but remember that FF deletes double punctuation, so I can't write ! ? without putting a space in between ! and ?. **

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Sixteen: Games_

"Are you sure that you don't want to play with the others?"

"Yeah… I'm fine."

It was gym time, and the actual part of the class in which the teacher taught them anything had ended, leaving the children to have some time to do whatever they wished. However, as the rest of her friends ran about happily, laughing and yelling to each other, Mion sat on a pile of timber and just watched as they did so. She was not in the mood for interacting with anyone right now, and would rather not run.

Rion placed her hands on her hips and looked at the others as they ran about, yelling to each other as they played their merry game of tag. "I don't know, it looks like they're having a lot of fun. Don't you want to have fun, too?" Rion asked, gesturing towards her friends with a huge smile on her face as if to encourage the girl.

Mion shook her head. "I'm not in the mood for tag," she said. She leaned back on the large piles of timber positioned behind her, using her arms as a place to rest her head. Sure, her friends looked like they were having a lot of fun, but for some reason, Mion just wasn't in the mood to have that kind of fun. Maybe she would join in later, but right now, the idea of resting was just too tempting.

Rion looked unsure as she glanced to the group of friends again, and then to the green-haired girl. "Are you upset over something?" she asked with a frown.

"Nah, I don't really think so…" Mion said.

That wasn't really true. Mion was in a sticky situation right now, as if being stuck in an alternate universe with no way to return home wasn't sticky enough. First of all, yesterday's chat with Satoshi had left her wondering what to do about the whole situation between him and Shion. She wanted to see the two of them together, but she didn't know what to do if Satoshi didn't like the girl in such a way. The only thing she knew about making a guy like a girl was to just be yourself, and that was what Shion was doing. There was nothing Mion could do about that, anyways. She didn't control her sister.

So what was going to happen? Were they never going to get together? That wouldn't be good at all. She wanted a world where everyone could be happy, and if Shion loved Satoshi so much, then a world where everyone was happy would be one where Shion was with the boy that she liked. If that didn't happen, then the world wouldn't be as Mion wanted it to be.

"You have a lot to deal with," Rion said. "Please take it easy for me, okay? I don't like seeing people suffer, it makes me sad…" She shot the girl a very cutesy smile as if to convince her in some form. That usually worked for young children like Rika. Yet, that cute smile from the goddess didn't do much good for the green-haired girl.

"I guess," Mion said. She looked towards her friends. Right now, from what she could tell, Shion was playing the role of "it." She was chasing after Satoshi, and the poor boy looked horrified as he tried to run away, going as fast as his legs would allow him to go. However, Shion was a lot faster than the boy, and it looked like she would reach him in no time. She sighed. Would something like that ever develop into the love that it needed to be?

Rion moved next to the girl and sat. "I think that you should take on one thing at a time," she suggested. "And love isn't something you can really control that easily. It takes a lot of time." She turned towards Mion, a small smile on her face. "Why don't you start with the thing that most matters to you? What do you want to fix first?"

Mion sighed. Everything took time to fix, though she supposed Rion was right. She couldn't do anything more than wait on it for now. That's what Shion had told her to do with Keiichi, anyway. If she were to just wait, then maybe, just maybe something would develop between her sister and Satoshi. She sure hoped so.

"So what do you think is most important right now?" Rion asked.

Well, there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed, but a lot of it wasn't in her power. She couldn't change the fact that Rena was gone, for one. She would just have to leave that up to chance, and in a world without regrets, Mion doubted that she would ever come. It was her greatest regret that had led to her coming, after all, and there was no reason for her to move to sleepy, rural Hinamizawa from the large city without a good reason.

Well, if that was out of power, then… what was she to do? She had already started working on Satoko, and it seemed to be going okay. Mion turned towards the garden shack near the middle of the garden, spotting the yellow-haired girl sitting against it with a bored look on her face. Today was the day that she was supposed to eat with them at lunch. Mion didn't know if she would, but she certainly hoped that she would be able to get the blonde-haired girl to do something to change her.

"Satoko is pretty important," Rion said. "She's a good friend of yours, so I think that's what you should do." After saying that, a startled look appeared on Rion's face. "Ah! I mean that's what you want to do! Please don't take my advice if that's what you don't want!" she added on hastily.

"No, it is what I want, and I think that's what I'm going to do," Mion said to the goddess as she observed Satoko. She really did look bored with all that was going on. Had she been the Satoko from Mion's world, the girl would probably be running around with the other club members, letting out cries of joy as she played with them. She knew that deep down inside, Satoko had to have a love for games. Perhaps if she pulled that side out, she would be able to see that Satoko during gym class.

This caused Rion too to look at the girl, a worried look on her face. "This is not the Houjou Satoko you know…" she said sadly. "I would also like to see her happy and having fun, too. I like to see my people like that, not suffering…"

Mion turned towards the goddess, letting out a small smile. "You really are a good goddess, huh? Unlike what everyone says about Oyashiro-sama…"

Rion nodded. "I don't like what people say about Oyashiro!" she cried out. "I'm not a bad goddess, I just try to protect everyone! I don't like to see them suffer like people think. That's just mean!"

It really was the exact opposite of what everyone said, wasn't it? Oyashiro was not one, but three, and this one had the appearance of a young girl, not a man. She was pretty sure from what Rion had told her about appearing as young girl in order to save power that the other Oyashiros did the same. The Oyashiros did not like suffering and were not evil like the legend said, and were in fact quite opposite. Well… she didn't know that about the other ones since she just knew Rion, but from what Rion said about how she didn't like people saying Oyashiro was evil, she assumed that all of them felt the same way.

"How much power do you have?" Mion asked.

Rion sighed. "Very little. I basically can only do what I've showed you. I can move people to other universes when in the right conditions, I can go to other universes, and I can show you images like I have been doing when you asked to see what was different about the world. That's about it." Rion looked down, a little sorrowful. "I would fix this world up if I could, but I can't."

Well, it looked like Rion couldn't do anything to help her really. Oyashiro must not be as powerful as the legend said if that's all that she could do. There was no way someone with so little power could have made anything like a curse.

_Yes, the legend is very different…_

"I wish I had more, but I don't… I think that you can fix a lot of things, though," Rion commented.

"What about Rena?" Mion asked. It had seemed like years since she had last seen her good friend. She was beginning to miss the girl, and feared that she would never ever get to see her again. "Is there any chance of her coming back?"

"I don't think so. Unless her family decides to move for another reason, there's not much chance of her coming back. Her father and mother are still together and there are no complications…" Rion said. There was an apologetic look in her eyes, and Mion knew form that look that she longed to be able to fix it. However, Mion knew that there was little chance, and she had to accept that. She didn't want the goddess to blame it on herself.

"Don't worry about it," Mion told the goddess. "Nothing is your fault, so you don't have to give me that look."

The goddess looked a little unsure.

"Really, I mean it. Don't blame yourself if you don't have that kind of power," Mion told her once again. "Okay?"

Rion tried to smile after that, and nodded very slightly.

_Though I do wish that Rena could come back… _Rena had been a wonderful addition to the club, and she was irreplaceable. The whole dynamic was a little off without her presence and without the presence of Satoko. She was hoping that Satoko would come back and heal the gap as much as she could soon, but the hole that was there from the absence of Rena was big. It just didn't seem right without the support that the orange-haired girl gave her, and the sweet smiles she would give her in the times where Mion felt down. She would always be able to cheer her up.

"I hope that she transfers in," Mion said. "I miss Rena."

Rion nodded. "I hope that she transfers in, too… but I don't think it will happen…"

_Well_, Mion thought, _I can hope._

But for now, she had to focus on what was in her power, and that specific thing was Satoko. She had promised Satoshi she would get the girl to come out of her shell, and she knew she had to in order to partially fill the hole created in the dynamic of the club. She had a good plan for what was going to happen today, too, even if the girl were to refuse to eat with them like the rules had told her she had to.

Mion looked at Satoko, at the image of her being completely bored as others had fun running about and playing games. It just didn't seem right at all to see the normally playful young girl like this.

_I just hope for the club's sake, for my sake, and of course for Satoshi's that this will work. If not, then I won't be able to get what I've been looking for, and nothing will ever seem complete. Even if it won't be without Rena… we could at least have Satoko to make me feel a little more at home…_

_~~~~X~~~~_

Lunch soon rolled around, and Mion found herself staring as Satoko took out her lunch from her backpack. She wasn't sure what to expect, really. She watched as the yellow-haired girl placed her bento box on her desk, then opening it up and revealing the contents inside. From what Mion could tell, it was lunch that had been bought at the store. Satoko looked briefly at the table that Mion and her friends were sitting at, but quickly returned to looking at her lunch. She pulled out chopsticks and hovered them over the lunch, licking her lips as she stared at what wonderful food awaited her mouth.

"She's not going to," Satoshi said to Mion. "It wasn't like she ever was, so… don't worry too much about it."

Mion turned towards the boy briefly, but then returned her gaze to Satoko. It looked as if she had no intention of going to sit with the others as she had promised.

Mion reached under the desk, finding the zipper of her backpack and pulling it open. Her hand dove into the opening and then began fishing about. When her hand grasped onto what she was looking for, she moved it back up to her face.

"Shion… the cards didn't—" Satoshi began.

"It's fine," Mion said, cutting him off. "I know what I'm doing, Satoshi-kun."

Mion stood up and wandered towards Satoko. When she wans in front of Satoko, she reached for a empty chair with her left, hooking her foot around one of the bars and pulling it towards her. She positioned it in front of Satoko's desk and plopped down on the chair in front of her, smiling at the girl.

Satoko was in the middle of bring a piece of meat to her mouth when Mion sat down. Her mouth was in fact open, with the meat covering inches away from her tongue. When she noticed the girl, though, she stopped right there. After waiting a little bit, she shut her mouth and allowed the chopsticks and the piece of meat she had been about to eat to fall to her bento box.

"What do you want now?" Satoko complained. "My lunch is calling for me!"

"Your lunch can wait for you to move over there," Mion said, pointing towards the cluster of desks full with her friends

Satoko looked at where she was pointing, and when she saw the group of friends having fun, her face twisted into a look of disgust. "I don't want to sit over there!" she cried. "I already told you a thousand times that I'm not going! When are you and my brother going to understand that?"

"But you promised, remember?" Mion spoke, holding up the deck of cards to remind the girl if she had forgotten, though Mion doubted that she had in the first place.

Satoko looked at the cards, a startled look on her face. However, she instantly looked away, crossing her arms over her chest, closing her eyes, and huffing. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she lied. "Now go away so I can eat in peace!"

"Yes you do, Satoko. Don't lie." Mion opened the box containing the deck and flipped it upside-down, allowing the deck of cards to fall into her open hand. She caught it without any card coming lose, and she then tossed the empty box to the side. "We played a game, and I said that if I won that you had to come over and sit with us for a lunch period. If you won, then I would leave. I won, so that meant you had to come and sit with us. Then you said you didn't want to, so I said that you could come and sit with us tomorrow then, and you agreed." Satoko still sat in her previous position, though only one eye remained closed.

Satoko soon shut that eye and resumed sitting how she had been perfectly; pretending like she still had no idea what the older girl was talking about.

Mion narrowed her eyes. "I know that you remember, so don't lie to me. Lying is weak."

That seemed to provoke her to turn back to sitting normally, dropping her forming position. "Okay, I remember, but I don't want to sit with you. Besides, the game that we played wasn't fair and there was no way that I would have won anyways." Satoko picked up her chopsticks again and she began to observe the food that was laid out before her. It was much too tempting to her. "So sorry, I refuse. And sorry—… No, I'm not sorry for saying I would before. I'm taking that back." Satoko pointed to the desks. "So go on, leave! I want to be able to enjoy this lunch in peace, and yesterday I barely had enough time to finish!"

Mion grumbled. She had known all along that the girl wasn't going to listen, but she had been hoping there was a chance that she was going to sit with her. Sighing, Mion realized she had to go to her next plan. She sure hoped that this one would work.

"Okay, you said that the last game wasn't fair, right?" Mion asked.

Satoko nodded. "Yup. Now leave," she replied insistently.

She ignored that last comment. "Well then, let's do this whole deal again. If I win, you come sit with us. If you win, I'll leave you alone. However, this time we're going to play another game." Mion began to shuffle through the cards in her hand quickly and with skill, not even looking at the cards as she did so. "It's a very basic game that everyone knows, and it's called Go Fish. I'm sure you've heard of it."

"No, why would I have heard of a name of a stupid game?" Satoko grumbled.

"Okay then. It's a very simple and basic game, as I said before. We each get six cards, but we don't show the cards to anyone. The point of the game is also to guess which cards we are holding, but only the number. Basically, you have to match the numbers of the cards you have with a card of another number. Each round, you ask if I have any cards of a certain number, and if I do, you get the card and get to make a match. If I don't, I say 'Go Fish' and you pick up another card. The next round, we do the same but with me guessing and you giving the card. When one of us runs out of cards or when all the cards in the deck are gone, we count up the number of matches we have. The player with the most wins."

It was fair enough. "Fine, but make it quick!" Satoko cried. "I still want to be able to eat my lunch, you know? !"

Mion nodded. "Okay, we'll go fast then."

The game was much fairer than before… or so it seemed. What Satoko didn't know was Mion's trick for card games like these. She could easily read a card from the marks and scratches on the back, so winning the game would be a piece of cake for her. It technically was no fairer than the game that they had been playing before.

Mion dealt six cards to herself and Satoko, and then picked up the cards and took a look at what numbers she had. There was a one, a six, a seven, a nine, a five, and a three. When she looked at Satoko, who was now doing the same, she took a very good look at the cards she was holding. The first one had a tear in the side and a tear in the bottom right corner, indicating that it was a six. The second had a huge smudge in the center and a bend mark at the bottom left, telling her that it was a seven. The third had a large scratch going from the top and a small dot of a drink stain near the bottom, so it had to be an eight. The fourth had been bent at both corners at the bottom and snipped a little short at the top right, so it was a two card. The next two both had snips at the bottom, but one of them had a smudge on the top left and one on the top right. They were a four card and a five card.

So that meant they only had three cards in common.

_This could be a little tough and last a little while._

"I'll start," Mion said. "Do you have any sixes?"

Satoko looked at her cards, nodded, and handed her the six card. She looked a little annoyed, wanting the game to end already. Perhaps she was happy to give away that card.

"Have any eights?" she then asked after barely looking at her cards.

Mion shook her head. "Go fish," she ordered the girl.

Satoko swiped a card from the deck. "This is a two card," she told the girl. Mion was about to open her mouth to tell her that wasn't something that should be shared, but she continued. "I have a two card in here. Can I make the match?"

Mion nodded. "Yes you can."

Satoko placed the two cards down on the desk in front of her.

It was now Mion's turn again. She looked at Satoko's cards again, and then to hers. "Do you happen to have any sevens?" she asked, though she already knew the answer to that.

Satoko handed her the seven card.

"Do you have any fours?" Satoko asked as she looked at her cards.

Mion shook her head. "Go Fish."

Satoko looked at Mion, a little irritated that she had gotten all her guesses right and she hadn't gotten any of hers right. She snatched a card from the pile, which was a ten by the looks of it. She stuffed it into her hand, and then studied her cards.

"Do you have any fives?" Mion asked.

Satoko handed her the five card, looking a little annoyed.

"Do you have any tens?" Satoko asked the older girl as she gazed over her cards.

"Go fish," Mion ordered her.

Satoko sighed and snatched up a card. Luckily, though, it was a ten card, just like she had been wishing for. A smile lit up her face, much to Mion's surprise and delight. "I guess this means I can make a match," Satoko said as she placed her ten cards down. This now made two matches, with Mion having three.

"Yes, and now you get to go again."

"Good!" Satoko cried. Then, she looked up at the older girl, who was smiling at how excited Satoko had gotten at the idea. As soon as she realized this, she put on her usual snobby face. "I mean, whatever. That's cool, I guess." She looked back to her cards. She only had two left, now. Unfortunately for her, though, Mion and Satoko now had none of the same cards, so there was no chance of her guessing a card right. Mion knew that she had to guess a card she knew would be wrong the next round, which bothered her a little. She hoped that Satoko would pick up a card she had on the next round.

"Okay, do you have a four?" Satoko asked.

Mion shook her head. "Go fish."

Satoko took a card from the pile, which happened to be a five. Mion cursed her luck inside her head. She only had a one card, a nine card, and a three card, not a five card. That meant that she had to go ahead and guess wrong.

"Do you have any threes?" Mion asked.

Satoko shook her head. "Go fish!" She cried in satisfaction.

Mion took a card from the pile, and when she looked at it, she smiled. "Aha, fisher's luck! I got the card I asked for, too." She happily put the three cards down on the desk, making her total number of matches four. "And that means that I get to go again, now!"

Irritation spread across Satoko's face. "Hey! That's not fair! You just got lucky," she protested.

"And so did you before," Mion said, reminding her of the luck she had gotten the turn before. "Anyways, do you have any nines?" she asked the girl.

Satoko shook her head. "Go fish."

Mion wasn't so lucky this time, and picked up a six card. She put that in her hand. Still, none of them had any cards that matched each other.

"Do you have any fours?" Satoko asked.

_She just asked that. _"No, go fish."

Satoko picked up a card, and when she did, she smiled. It seemed that an idea lit her face as she stared at the card, too, as a look of excitement was blended into that smile. "Do you have any nines?" she asked, knowing fully well that Mion did seeing as she had just asked that question.

Mion handed the nine card over. It seemed that Satoko was really getting the hang of the game. That was the way people usually used to get more cards. Mion didn't use it, though, as it wasn't necessary when she could just read the cards like a children's book.

Mion was down to two cards and Satoko to three. Mion had four matches, and Satoko had three now. It was getting close.

"Got any ones?" Mion asked.

Satoko shook her head. "Nope, go fish."

Mion happened to pick up a four card, which she knew Satoko had. She hoped that she wouldn't happen to guess a four card, though, and that she would go for another one this time. Though it was unlikely, seeing as she had just asked for a four twice.

"Have any eights?" she asked.

Mion shook her head, a grin on her face. "Nope, go fish."

Satoko picked up six, and Mion smiled. Once again, they had the same card.

"Do you have any fours?" Mion asked the girl, deciding to go for that card instead of the other one.

Satoko reluctantly handed the green-haired girl the card she had asked for before. She was in the lead still, but this time with two more matches.

It seemed like Satoko was really getting into this game. Mion watched as Satoko observed her cards, a puzzled look on her face as she contemplated which one to chose. This was more like the Satoko she knew, though probably less competitive.

"Do you have any sixes?"

Mion sighed as she handed the six card to the girl. That had been the one she was hoping to ask the girl for before, and now she only had one card that didn't match up with any of the cards that Satoko had.

"Do you have any ones?" Mion asked as she looked at her card.

Satoko shook her head and pointed to the deck. "Go fish."

Mion reached in, and much to her delight, got exactly what she had been asking for a second time. She placed the two one cards down happily, a grin on her face. "Okay, I got another match and now I have no more cards! That means that the game is over." She looked over to Satoko, and over to her matches. She only had four, while Mion now had six. "And since I have more matches, that means I win."

"W-What! You just got lucky there!" cried Satoko. "That shouldn't count!"

"But you got it before, too? Remember?" Mion had to remind the girl yet again.

Satoko looked down and grumbled, fully remembering the time where she had gotten lucky and picked the card that she had asked for. In this case, though, Mion had been much more lucky. There had barely been any chance of getting a one card.

"Anyways, that means you'll be eating lunch with us tomorrow." Mion collected the cards on the desk, returning it to the main deck and then stuffing the cards into the box. "I'll leave you alone to enjoy your lunch for now, okay? But you have to remember to join us tomorrow."

"Fine, fine," grumbled Satoko.

Mion couldn't help but smile. "Oh, Satoko? But I must say that you were really into the game. You liked it a lot, didn't you?" she asked the girl.

Satoko instantly looked up at the older girl, eyes wide with shock. She did her best to get rid of that look, though, and put on her best hostile face. However, the shock was still visibly there. "I did not! I didn't care for the game in the slightest! I was just hoping to get to eat my lunch alone, which I can now do! Okay? Okay. Now leave the table. I want to eat my lunch!"

Mion couldn't help but giggle a little. "If you say so." She knew that the girl refused to admit it, but she definitely was enjoying that game. It seemed a lot like how Satoko enjoyed games at first in her world, before she had become so competitive. There was no way that how she had been acting during the game was just her wanting to win so that Mion would leave her alone. She would have been a lot more annoyed if that were the case, even when she got a match.

Tomorrow, she would definitely get Satoko to sit with them. If not, she could use the cards to draw her in again. But whatever the case was, she knew that today, she had made progress. Maybe it would be a while before Satoko joined them, but at least she had done something to change her. Besides, it proved that Satoko could indeed be changed.

Soon enough, things would be better.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**I would rather not put much here because I don't want to talk about life right now, so this is going to be a short edition here. I actually really have nothing to say at all. First, sorry for not uploading yesterday. The new Wii came, and there was a new game too, so I got distracted. You could see why, yes? I don't know if I'm going to upload tomorrow, I probably won't but I hope to, and I'll try to upload on either Tuesday or Monday. If I upload on Monday, I'll try uploading on Wednesday as well, but no promises.**

**Anyways, I have to go proofread because it's late and I want to go to bed.**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: "Cards" and "Games" huh... I need better titles at times.**


	18. Chapter 17: Lunch

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. That's all I have to say about next week. I want to get to spring break, but we'll have to see if I survive next week. I have a history test, a science test, probably a math test (he hasn't said anything yet but likely we will have one), a Spanish project, an English essay, a history essay (we haven't even started the unit we're testing on..,), a English project… I think that's it. Maybe. I don't know if I will update next week. I need some time to do all of the above. I hope you understand.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Seventeen: Lunch_

The beginning of the morning was boring, as usual. For some reason, Chie was taking an extra long time getting to class and starting it, so the classroom was currently full of children running about and misbehaving, causing mischief they knew would give them a severe punishment if the teacher was there at the time. Mion tried her best to ignore it, though. She wasn't quite in the mood to deal and listen to children screaming as they got themselves into some violent quarrel.

"Please don't tell me today is going to be like yesterday," Rion said as she glanced over to Mion's friends. Rika was on her own right now, and Keiichi wasn't here yet. Satoshi and Shion, however, had stricken up a conversation, with a cheerful expression being worn on Shion's face as she chatted to the boy, who seemed a little unsure of what she was talking about.

_ No, it's not. I just don't tend to like the mornings very much these days. _She didn't know what was causing that to happen, though. She had never been this tired and irritated during the mornings, but now she seemed to dread them every single day.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. Well, whatever the case was, she would end up getting into a conversation with someone anyway and have fun. Just maybe not in the morning.

"I think that it's a nice day, and you should try to go out and play!" suggested Rion in a cheerful tone, trying to make Mion a little less grumpy.

"We don't have gym until this afternoon," Mion pointed out in a whisper. She hoped that no one would catch her conversations with Rion, as they would be very confused as to why she was talking to air. "So not this morning. I think that I'm just going to relax a little."

Rion nodded. "Well, that works too!" she replied in her usual happy tone. "I think that's good for you! Get some nice relaxation and enjoy yourself this afternoon. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters!"

Mion cracked a small smile at the goddess before returning to her thoughts.

She didn't know what she was going to do today. Well, she did a little, but her only plans consisted of asking Satoko to go sit with them. Today she had brought an extra special game that she was hoping to try out with not just Satoko but the rest of her friends as well. She didn't know if she could ever start up the gaming club again, but she sure hoped so. Every one of her friends loved games, so it would be wonderful if they could all get together for activities. She knew she usually had her talks with Satoshi every afternoon, but she was sure that he would like it more if he were playing games with everyone.

She had a lot of games, even in this world. They were stuffed in one of the old chests that Mion and Shion had from when they were little. Today, she had brought a particular game with her in a bag and put it in her locker. It had seemed odd to her that her locker was so… empty. It was usually stuffed full with games and outfits to the point that it was dangerous to approach it. A lot of kids avoided going anywhere near it as if it would turn into some kind of dangerous monster if they did.

Mion sure hoped that Satoko would accept her offer to play games with her. If not, that was fine. She had other ways to work around the situation. She knew that Satoko was a fan of the game she chose, and that it was perfect for her. Perhaps her skill would shine through today. Perhaps she would realize just how much she loved to play games. It was a long shot, but anything could happen. It was going to happen eventually, but…

A large splatter followed by clattering interrupted Mion's thoughts. She whipped herself around on her chair to the source of the noise, wondering what it could possibly be.

"Not this again! Who in the world does this?" cried Keiichi.

"Kei-chan?"

There Keiichi was, standing under the entrance to the door, soaking wet. There was an empty bucket at his side, which had a small amount of water splattered before it. However, most of the water had been poured into a puddle around the poor boy.

"At least it was actually a hot day this time!" he cried.

Mion blinked in surprise. Something like this wouldn't be shocking had it been her own world, but… she had never seen something like this happen in this world. She slowly looked over to Satoko, who was hiding a small smirk. She knew that her world, Satoko was known for setting up pranks and traps, but she didn't know that she did it in this world, too. It wasn't like it happened every day or anything like in her world, where some unfortunate soul would end up caught in one of Satoko's traps in the morning, usually Keiichi.

"I wonder who does that to poor Keiichi all the time," Rika commented, suddenly appearing by Mion's side and causing her to wonder just how long she had been there for.

"Don't forget the other minor pranks that always happen during the day," Shion pointed out to Rika. "Those are probably caused by the same person."

Satoshi just sighed and shook his head, indicating that he knew that it was his sister who was pulling all the pranks. Mion wondered why he hadn't said anything about it to anyone. Well, if he did, then maybe people would start bothering her not to do it, and she could easily get upset about it. She wasn't the type of person you wanted to mess with, or the type of person who wanted to be messed with.

Keiichi grumbled as he sat down in his seat. "Man, at least it's bright out today. Maybe the sun can dry me off…" he sighed. "But I don't like having to do math problems when my clothing is damp. It's distracting."

"Don't complain," Shion said, "it has to be around a hundred degrees in here…"

Mion looked to the boy. "Kei-chan, how often does this happen to you?" she asked him.

He turned towards her, shaking his head. "I don't know, every so often. It's not like it doesn't happen to other people during the day. …Well, not always the bucket of water. There's the tripwire, there's the inkstone, there's the ropes… I could go on about all the pranks that happen around here." Keiichi leaned back in his seat, trying to make himself a little more comfortable. "Be glad nothing has happened to you yet, though I'm surprised it hasn't…"

"Mii, I haven't gotten pranked at all," Rika piped up. "It's not like it happens all the time."

Keiichi shrugged. "It happens a lot of the time. Usually to the younger kids," he replied.

"I'm guessing that from what you guys are saying, you don't know who is doing it," Mion responded.

"Yeah, that's right. It happens often but no one has figured out just who sets up the traps. But whoever it is, they're really going to get it for the time that rock nearly fell on my head. I could have really been hurt!" cried Keiichi.

Rika smiled gently at him. "Mii, but you weren't hurt. I think that the time with the tripwire and the mud was worse."

"Don't remind me…" sighed Keiichi. "I was just wandering through the garden, and then suddenly, I tripped over an unexpected tripwire. I should have seen it, too! Then I fell face first in the mud." He sighed and shook his head. "I was dirty all day."

So they didn't know it was Satoko, then. If she had to be honest, she was very glad that this side of Satoko existed in this world, even if some people labeled her traps as being annoying. It went to show that maybe, just maybe, she could revert her to being the Satoko she knew so well. It would require a bit more work, though, but Mion was sure that she could reach that goal soon.

_~~~~X~~~~_

It was work time again, and Mion found herself staring at her math packet. She was drawing a picture of a cat, trying to make it look like she was doing some work. Chie had an eye on her now that she had realized Mion hadn't made as much progress as she hoped she would in the last few days. Mion knew for a fact that this packet would never get turned in, but Chie sure was hoping that the girl would at least be able to turn something in that wasn't just a bundle of scribbles.

She was glad that she could get away with drawing random pictures of animals in class rather than doing work. It was a lot more fun to do, even if she wasn't a good artist.

However, as Rika went to the back of the classroom to borrow a pair of scissors, she happened to catch the picture Mion was drawing of a cat. Her eyes lit up with joy and she wandered over to the girl, looking over her shoulder as she sketched the picture of the cat.

"Is that Mr. Cat?" she asked hopefully.

Mion nodded her head. That wasn't the intention, and she had just been drawing some random cat, but why not? "Yeah, and I'm going to draw Azumi next." After Mion had finished drawing the oddly skinny legs of the cat, she went and began to create the head of the next cat. She wasn't a very good artist at all, but that didn't stop her from doodling and having fun rather than doing math homework. She liked it, and even if she wasn't good at drawing, she was better at it than math, and it was much more fun than math, anyways.

Rika smiled as Mion finished up the drawing by adding a bow around the next of the cat. "Yay! I love it. You can draw better than me, sometimes. I have a picture of all the animals I have at my house. Mr. Cat is at the center, and then next to him is Hiro the dolphin, and then there's Mr. Cow and Ms. Bull, and at the very top is Shirou the eagle. I also drew Ms. Squirrel, even though I don't have her yet. I'm saving up all my money to buy her!"

Mion smiled at the girl. She turned towards her math paper and began to draw the figure of a squirrel, though it still wasn't very good or accurate. It looked a little more like a mouse standing on two legs until she added on the bushy tail at the end. "Is this what Ms. Squirrel looks like?" Mion asked Rika.

Rika nodded eagerly. "Yeah, except I sometimes draw her with a flower in her arms. She likes flowers, but mostly tulips."

"Okay, well then, I'll just add—"

"Sonozaki-chan and Furude-san!" Chie yelled, causing the two students to turn and look towards their teacher. She had a scolding look her eyes, and the moment they both saw it, the idea of talking anymore died. "Please don't talk during class, this is a work period! Sonozaki-chan, you know what I said about doing this review packet! I need something to grade you with! Please stop doodling and get to doing the problems!"

Mion sighed and nodded. "Yes Chie-sensei…"

Rika frowned. "Mii, we were only trying to draw out all the animal friends…" she said sadly in the cutest tone possible.

That didn't seem to work too well on Chie, though, and she just shook her head. "You can draw your animal friends another time. Sonozaki-chan is very behind on work and she needs to finish her review packets. Then she can draw your animal friends for you!"

"Yes Chie-sensei…" Rika replied before scampering over to her seat.

Mion sighed. There went her chances of doodling during class and doing nothing. She would actually have to try and work on what she was doing now.

She looked down at her paper. The words written on it and the problems too seemed to be in some kind of foreign language to her eyes. This was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.

A finger poked her shoulder. She turned around to meet the blue gaze of Keiichi. He had his usual sort of cheesy grin on his face as he looked into the eyes of the girl.

"Do you need any help? I just finished my own math homework. I can help you now if you need."

"Um…" Mion wasn't sure what to say to that. She really did need help, but she really didn't want to bother him and she didn't care about her work, anyways. "Well, I don't actually plan to do _well _on this section—"

"Nonsense," Keiichi replied. "Show me what you're up to."

Mion handed him the huge packet, and she just sat there as he scanned through what she was trying to do. "Okay, so this is hard stuff. At least that's what a lot of people tend to say when they get up to this unit, but really it isn't if you take another glance at it." He pointed to a part of a problem. "So what do you think that this is?"

"That makes sixteen, but that was the obvious part. I'm actually having trouble with—"

"I know, I'm getting there." He pointed to another part of the problem." This is a little trickier, and I'm sure that's what you meant. Now watch what I'm about to do…"

Keiichi began solving the problem, and Mion watched carefully as he did. He was flawless as he did so, not hesitating one moement before doing something. He really did know what he was doing, and it seemed that he had perfectly memorized exactly what you needed to do in this situation. How he was able to do it, Mion would never know. He was really a natural at this kind of math.

"So, does it make sense?"

Mion shook her head. "It wasn't really explaining anything…"

"I know." He pointed to part of the problem that he had done for her. "You see this part? Why do you think that I did that?"

She shrugged. "Cuz you wanted to?"

"No, because under the properties here…" Keiichi said as he circled the part of the problem he was referring to, "you have to do this instead of what you usually do. Does that make sense?"

"Ah, yeah…" Mion said as she observed the problem. "I was doing it the other way…"

"That's what everyone does. I knew that was the issue." He leaned back in his chair, smiling at her. "I think that you can do the next one on your own now that you know the mistake that you've been making."

Mion nodded. She went to the problem and began to solve it. She didn't quite know what she was doing, but if she went by what Keiichi just told her, maybe she wouldn't get into a tricky spot. Was it really just that one part that made her mess up, though? It seemed like she had a lot more problems than that.

"Ah—…" Keiichi reached his hand out. "You're doing it wrong. Here, let me show you…"

He placed his hand on Mion's wrist, causing her to erupt into a wave of blushes. He didn't seem to notice though, and began to draw out the problem while explaining a few things. However, the only thing that Mion could pay attention to was the warmth that was grasping onto her, of the very fact that he was holding on to her wrist. The words didn't seem to be reaching her ears, and the numbers he was writing suddenly didn't seem to be making any sense.

"…Mion? Are you listening?" he asked her.

"Huh… oh? No… I was doing…" She couldn't explain why she wasn't listening, so she just didn't finish that sentence.

Keiichi sighed and looked down at her paper. "Mion, you're never going to do well if you don't listen."

"I'm sorry, it's just that… ah…" She really couldn't explain, that would be too embarrassing.

"Just that…?"

Mion looked away, blushing. "It's… nothing…"

Keiichi seemed to notice the fact that she was blushing, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was touching Mion's hand. He instantly drew it away, a blush of an equal color spreading across his face. "Ah, sorry about that!" he almost cried out, the only thing keeping him hushed being the fact that Chie wouldn't be too pleased if he yelled. "I wasn't thinking, really!"

"It's fine, it's nothing!" cried Mion. She realized very quickly that she was making it seem like she hadn't been paying attention because of that, which was true, but she didn't want it to seem like that. That was just too embarrassing and she didn't want him to think such a thing.

Keiichi looked away, embarrassed. There was a rather frustrated look on his face as he did so, though, and he was soon lost his own thoughts. Realizing this, Mion turned back to her math work, deciding not to bother the boy. She began to write random things on the paper, hoping that Chie wouldn't come and notice. As long as she didn't notice, it would be fine.

She sighed. Why were things getting so complicated around him recently?

_~~~~X~~~~_

Lunch came, and as did the time of the day Mion had been waiting for. The instant it started, she stuffed her math notebook in her bag and wandered over to Satoko's desk, where she had already began to take out her lunch. The moment she noticed her coming her way, though, Satoko put her lunch down, an annoyed look painting her face. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for the green-haired girl to arrive, not once changing her expression.

"Hello, Satoko! I hope you remember the deal," Mion said cheerfully. "Are you ready to go over?"  
>Satoko narrowed her eyes. "I don't want to," she said stubbornly. "I don't need friends and I don't want to spend my lunch chatting with you all."<p>

Mion sighed. "Okay, but you promised. I said that if I won, that you had to come over and sit. Last time I let it slide and we went for another round, but… I won't allow it this time." She pointed to the desk. "You see? We're all waiting for you. You don't even have to talk too much. We're actually going to spend the lunch period playing a little game."

"I don't want to play Go Fish," complained Satoko. "It's boring and I would rather be enjoying the silence at my own desk and the flavor of my lunch I spent time cooking this morning. Now if you would excuse me, Sonozaki Number Two, I have chunks of beef just waiting to be eaten." She took out the bento box and opened the lid, revealing the contents of her lunch. She licked her lips as she stared at it. "Mmm… looks good…"

Mion placed her hands on her hips. "We're not playing Go Fish this time; we're playing a board game that I brought from home. I know you'll like it," she told her. "So come on, it'll be a lot of fun."

Satoko shook her head. "You don't know me if you think that a board game will be fun for me. You know what's fun for me? Sitting here and eating my lunch, that's what's fun. In silence." She began to poke at chunks of meat with her chopsticks, dying to eat it. Mion wondered why she just didn't eat while she listened to her if she wanted to eat so badly. Was her presence really ruining the food for her, or was she just being silly?

"I know it'll be fun for you. You're one who really likes strategy, right?" Mion asked, crossing her arms under her chest as she observed the young girl.

"And what makes you think that?" challenged Satoko.

Mion smirked. She knew she wasn't supposed to know that, but she had evidence. "Because I know you're the one who set up the trap for Keiichi this morning. You didn't set it up for anyone else, too. You meant for the water bucket to fall on Keiichi and no one else. You set it up so that it would fall on _him_ when it came in, not when someone else came in." She stood in silence for a while as she took time to observe Satoko's stunned face. "And that involves a lot of strategy. And then there are all the other traps I've heard about… like that one with the tripwire and the mud Keiichi told me about. You thought hard about where to put it, didn't you? But you didn't put it there just because of the mud. You put it there because you knew no one would see it there."

Satoko stood there, stunned. She blinked a few times, staring up at the girl. "No, it wasn't me, it was some other kid. I don't make traps," she lied as she brushed off the expression faster than wind. "I don't know why you're saying it was me. Go find out which kid did it and ask them if they want to play."

Mion could only shake her head in response. Really, did she think that that lie would work after she wore a guilty expression like the one before on her face? "Satoko, come on. I'm just saying that I want you to join in and eat with us, just for once. You don't even have to say much, just play."

Satoko shook her head.

"Well then," Mion said. "I guess that you're not so brave after all, huh? I guess you're just too scared to come and sit with us. I thought you were independent and strong, and that was why you weren't sitting with us. But the lie you just told me proved otherwise." She knew she was being harsh with the girl, but she had to find some way to get this to work. If she could pull it off, then this would all be water under the bridge later.

Satoko looked surprised. "No, I'm strong! That's why I'm not sitting with you!" she cried out.

"Strong people aren't necessarily ones that don't have friends, Satoko." Mion looked her straight in the eye as she said that, as if looking right into her soul. "…Fine… Let's make another deal, okay? If you come and sit with us, I'll acknowledge that you are a strong person and aren't sitting with us for that reason. However, if you don't, I'll continue to think you're not doing it because you're scared. Is that okay?"

Satoko looked a little frustrated and conflicted as she looked down at her table, at her lunch. She clenched her teeth together as she attempted to come to some sort of decision. "Fine, but I have to be able to enjoy my lunch! Just don't bother me, okay?" she yelled out as she grabbed her bento box.

A huge grin broke out across Mion's face. Had she done it? "Okay!" cried Mion. "That's just fine! As long as you sit with us."

Satoko looked surprised by the sudden change of Mion's attitude. She shook it off, though, and reluctantly began to bring her lunch over to where everyone else was sitting.

Mion sat down at her normal spot. "Guys, Satoko is going to come sit with us," Mion informed them, "so you have to make some space for her. Rika, if you could scoot that way…"

Rika looked surprised by the announcement. "Huh? Oh yay! Okay, I'm moving over." She got up from her chair and moved it along with her lunch, her desk, and her chair. When this was done, the others began to move theirs down, too, so that Satoko wasn't pushed against the wall.

Satoko grumbled as she put her desk up with the others, then placing her lunch down. She climbed into her seat and sighed as she opened her bento box. Shutting her eyes and trying to ignore the people around her, she began to eat her lunch.

"Okay, so do you want to play—"

Satoko held up a hand. "Not today, I just want to eat my lunch."

Mion opened her mouth to say something, but shut it right after. Maybe that was for the best, after all. For now, Satoko should get used to being around so many people, she decided. The best way to do that was to allow her to eat her lunch and talk.

"So, Onee, how has math been treating you?" Mion asked, trying to start up a random conversation.

Shion sighed and shook her head. "I don't like math at all. You know, after seeing how badly I was doing, she gave me the same review packet she gave you. It started out kind of easy with the stuff we learned a while ago, though… you know, by now, I've forgotten how to do a lot of that."

"Same here, Kei-chan had to help me a lot." Mion turned towards the boy and gave him a smile, as if telling him to speak up.

"Huh? Oh yeah, I did. I helped your sister with a lot of her work, too," Keiichi responded. "But Satoshi also did a lot of the helping."

Satoshi grinned slightly. "Well, I'm not too good myself. I only know a little, so I don't think Mion learned too much…"

"Nonsense!" yelled Shion. "Satoshi-kun, you're a wonderful teacher and I learned a lot from you! You shouldn't say things like that. Thanks to you, I understood how to do my geometry section a little more. I would have gotten yelled at Chie if I hadn't completed that!"

Mion had to smile a little at how quickly Shion responded to Satoshi saying such a thing like that. She was glad to hear that Satoshi was helping her, too. Maybe it would lead to some kind of romance between the two of them, but perhaps that was her getting her hopes up a little. He didn't like her right now.

Well, thank you, Mion," Satoshi said politely. "I tried my best to help, and it's nice to hear it worked."

"Mii, I hate fractions," Rika said, piping up. "That's the worst part. I think that the worst part of fractions, though, is when the denominators aren't the same! Then you have to change them and it gets complicated when you have to add two fifty-seconds and three twenty-fourths."

"Fractions are easy!" blurted out Satoko without thinking, much to everyone's surprise. "All you have to do is multiply the denominators to know what to change it to, and then it's really easy! You just add and simplify!"

Mion grinned. Perhaps Satoko wasn't thinking when she spoke up, but it was good to know that she was interacting and at least listening.

"Okay, so let me give you a problem to test it," Keiichi said to the young girl, a playful smirk on his face.

"Sure, go ahead. I can do any problem," Satoko said.

"Okay, so say that there's a fifth of a cake, a sixth of a cake, and a seventh of a cake on the on a plate. Now, say that you can eat a cake in sixty seconds. If you ate every piece of cake, how much would remain?" he asked her, a triumphant grin on his face as he leaned back in his chair.

"Easy!" cried Satoko. She rammed a hand into her backpack and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil, and then wrote down the three fractions on the paper. She began to change the denominators, and as she did so, everyone giggled a little. Perhaps she hadn't noticed that the answer was easy, that if she had eaten every slice of cake, then there would be none left. She had been distracted by the fractions.

When she had finished, she stood there for a moment, staring at her sheet of paper. Silence followed, and suddenly, an angered expression appeared on her face.

"Hey, that was a trick question!" she cried out.

"Exactly. So what's the answer?" Keiichi asked the girl.

"Well if I ate it all, then there would be none left!" Satoko yelled. She became quiet after that, a little embarrassed at not having noticed it. "Well what do I care, it was just one stupid problem! Hmph!"

Satoko went back to being quiet after that, and Mion looked at Keiichi.

"Was that really the best idea?" Mion asked the boy.

"It was just a joke," Keiichi said. "It was fine, she'll probably start talking again eventually."

Rika smiled. "I think that I wouldn't have noticed it, either. I was working out how to do the problem in my head and then I realized that it was a trick. Satoko is still smart~. Satoko is probably a lot better at math than me, anyways."

"Probably," Satoko replied.

"See?" Rika said. "She's right, she knows it too! I'm not very good at math. Chie-sensei says I need to work more on math than art, but I prefer art."

"Me too, I like it when she assigns me art projects," Keiichi replied. "But since I'm a lot older than you, I don't get them often."

"I prefer doing math than art!" Satoko replied. "It's tougher and it's better than doing some art project that doesn't take any effort at all."

_Well, at least she's talking… even though all she's doing is boasting about herself._ Mion was very glad that Satoko was at least saying a few things, that was better than nothing.

"I can see why Satoko would like math… she is good at it, and it is good to like things you are good at," Rika replied. "I think that she could easily defeat me in a math contest. I saw her grade sheet once and it was a lot better than mine! I think Satoko deserves a prize for doing so well. Here!" Rika picked up a piece of meat with her chopsticks and placed it in Satoko's bento box.

Satoko blinked in surprise. "What?" She looked a little confused, though quite understandably so.

"Eat it," Rika urged with a smile. Mion quickly realized that the girl completely understood what she was trying to do by bringing Satoko over, and that she was trying to be friendly so that Satoko would want to stay and talk. _Good job, Rika! That's our Furude Rika all right. Good to see that at least that hasn't changed!_

Satoko reached for the piece of meat with her chopsticks, and then hesitantly put it in her mouth. She chewed slowly, and when she swallowed, her eyes lit up in surprise. "Wow, that's really well cooked! I like this food," Satoko admitted. She wasn't afraid to say something like that about food, Mion decided, since she liked it so much.

"I made it," Rika said with a smile. "I'm glad that you like it! I work very hard on making myself lunch every day and I like to hear that other people like it."

"Oh, I want to try, Rika-chan!" cried Keiichi.

Rika smiled, holding out her bento box. "Sure, go ahead! There's a lot for everyone. I made too much."  
>Keiichi took a piece, and ate it up quickly. When he finished swallowing, he grinned. "Oh wow, Rika-chan! You really do make a good piece of meat. It's really well cooked and I can tell you put a lot of effort into it."<p>

Rika smiled right back. "Mii, thank you. I wanted to make sure that it was perfect so I tried my hardest."

"My meat isn't nearly as good," Shion said as she looked into her bento box. "It's just leftovers. Here…" Shion picked up a piece of meat with her chopsticks and plopped it down into Satoko's bento box. It seemed that she too knew exactly what she was doing. "Try some."

Satoko picked up the meat and bit into it, beginning to chew on it. When she swallowed, she nodded. "Yeah, it's pretty good but I like mine and Rika's better." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I think that I could cook better than everyone, though. I'm really good at it."

"Mii, are you sure?" Rika said. "I'm a good cook."

"Yeah, I'm sure about it. I'm pretty good, after all. Yours was good but mine was better." She leaned back in her chair. It seemed that her stubborn attitude was returning, but not completely. She was interacting with them, after all.

"Okay, then today we'll make the best lunch ever for tomorrow, and then we'll bring it in," Rika said. "We'll have everyone judge who is the best at making lunch!"

Satoko looked surprised by the sudden challenge, but she brushed it off. "Okay, fine then! I'll just have to show you that I can make food without a problem. You'll see!"

Rika smiled. "Yay! This is going to be fun."

Mion laughed at the two of them. Tomorrow was going to be interesting. She decided that she wouldn't bother Satoko tomorrow and see what happened. Judging by the fact that they were going to have a cooking contest, it was a little inevitable that she would end up interacting with everyone else during lunch time. Mion now felt a little bad for her behavior before, but she had had to use it to push her to sit with her. At least tomorrow she would find some way to make it up, and hopefully then Satoko would forgive her.

Would this really change Satoko, though? Mion didn't know. Only time would tell.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Hi. I wrote this chapter for you guys, and I hope it lasts. I may update on Friday, but we'll see. I listed everything I have next week up there and I need to do them and do well on them, so I don't know if I can update. I'll try my best. I know that I will probably not be able to at all next week aside from the weekend, so sorry. I hope you understand why :c. After that, though, is spring break, and you know what that means! It means I update more without stressing about it at all. It looks like I will finish this before camp, but I still want to be updating a little more. But I can't next week, and I hope you understand why. By the way, I just checked the testing calendar and it appears that we do indeed have a math test. _UGH._ And to think, they're giving us no study hall this week… we actually made a petition for them to give us study hall, and apparently we're having a protest during the morning announcements. Well, let's see how this goes…**

**On the subject of games, you all know I've never played any card games aside from Go Fish. That's the problem here. I do know how to play Old Maid, but they don't play Old Maid. Just Old Geezer. Anyways, I'm going to do board games now, but here's my problem: This fanfiction Is in 1983 in Japan. I don't know what board games are translated into Japanese at this time in Japan. I can look up information about board games, but not when they were translated into Japanese. That's a little tough. I'm going to be using some board games, but… do you guys really mind if I use a board game that may or may not be in Japan in 1983? I know it's a little… odd, but I need to have more games. I will try to find information on them, but I don't know if I can.**

**Now I must go revise quickly and then sleep and dream about fluffy kitten to ease my stress. **

**~Crimso**


	19. Chapter 18: Contest

**Crimso's Notes v.2**

**I wanted to start this earlier, but my family decided to go out for dinner right after I woke up from my nap that I took right after returning from school, and then the restaurant took forever to get our food, and then we went somewhere else, and then when I got home there were a thousand things I wanted to do since I hadn't gotten to do anything all day… You get the idea now, don't you?**

**I will talk a little more about updating in Crimso's Corner because there is something I must bring up. For now, read on.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Eighteen: Contest_

The school day was nothing special, continuing on like any other school day. Mion had fallen asleep on her math sheet in the middle of class, and thankfully Chie was too busy reading her book about the history of curry to notice that her student had fallen asleep. Another stroke of luck had hit her when Shion noticed this and woke her up right before Chie got up to check on the students and see if they needed any help. She knew that Chie got mad when she didn't do her work, and she was already used to how angry she got to the point where she was no longer intimidated by it, but her rage at a student who had fallen asleep in class was more than just a little scary.

For now, she had decided to save her math for later. If Keiichi could help her later, that would be nice, but he currently in the middle of a Japanese assignment. Besides, he had left the classroom a little while ago. She was now flipping through the pages of her science textbook. There were questions she had to answer at the end, but she found herself looking at the questions, scanning quickly though the book for the answer, and then jotting it down. It wasn't like she was going to be yelled at for not reading the other parts. Chie would never know, anyways.

What she was really looking forward to was lunch. Rika had walked in in the morning declaring that she had worked hard on the food she had promised to cook, and Mion was really excited. Satoko had bragged that hers was better by far, and then continued on acting like normal through the rest of the day. She was again sitting alone and paying no attention to anyone in the room as she jotting down answers to her assignment. This ment that Satoko had not forgotten, of course, and that she would be interacting later.

Even if all she had done was brag, Mion knew that sitting with her friends had done some good for her. It was fun, anyways. Everyone had made her feel comfortable, and for that, Mion was grateful.

She closed her science textbook, done with her work. She let out a large yawn, and decided she would step out of the classroom for a bit to stretch. Chie wouldn't mind, as she would probably just decide that the girl had gone to use the bathroom. She stood up from her seat and walked right out of the room and into the hallway.

She stood to the side of the classroom door, stretching out her body as she went over random things in her head. She wondered what exactly Rika had prepared that she was so confident about. It had to be good if she thought that she could beat Satoko, who was also probably a master cook. She didn't know so much about this world, but in her world, the two of them were such good cooks and it was very hard for anyone to decide who was better.

Other than that, though, there were no more things that she was looking forward to. It looked like things were just going to be normal.

_I think I'll go wash my face or something. _The girl sighed and stepped down the hall. She went to the turn of the hallway, to where the bathrooms were. However, just before she made that turn, she noticed something.

Satoshi and Keiichi were both standing by a window, chatting to each other. Mion knew it was not good to eavesdrop, but for some reason, she was interested in what the two of them were doing talking to each other. It was quite unlike them to be standing outside of class and cutting it just to talk. Usually, the two of them were both a little more concerned about that kind of thing.

"…And that's why I was surprised when I saw her up and cooking at six AM this morning. To be honest, I'm glad that aunt and uncle didn't see her…" Satoshi was saying.

"Well, that's a good thing, then! I'm glad to hear that Satoko went through with it, too," Keiichi responded. "I was surprised when she announced that her food was going to be better than Rika's too. Well, not because it's unlike her to say that, since it is like her, but because I didn't think that she would. I mean, it involves interacting with people, doesn't it?"  
>Satoshi seemed to nod, though it was slight. "Yeah, but involved proving herself in a contest. I guess that she just likes to show off, and she probably wanted to let Rika know that she was better than her. That's just how she is."<p>

"Well, in any case, I'm really happy for you, Satoshi." Keiichi smiled at him. "Really, I didn't think that Satoko would ever sit with us. Amazing how Shion managed to pull that off…"

"I'm shocked, too. I don't know how she did it. Do you?" Satoshi asked.

Keiichi shook his head. "I don't really. I mean… we've tried so many things in the past. You've been convincing her every day. Heck, I remember those days when I first moved here where I would go up to her and give her a few good reasons why she should join us."

Satoshi raised an eyebrow. "A few good reasons?" he said. Then, he laughed. "It was more like a jumble of reasons! I couldn't even follow what you were saying after a while. You first started talking about how interacting with people is fun and how friends are not a weakness, and then about how some kids in your old school managed to pull off winning a baseball game he wouldn't have ever won if it weren't for his friends, and then how you thought it was stupid at the time, and then you went on and used several other examples from sports and a book you read…" He grinned wryly. "Satoko got lost and she stopped listening after the part with the baseball…"

"Ahaha! I could have sworn she fell asleep!" Keiichi said, laughing. "Though I guess my tactics aren't of any use? I'm sorry about that, I really did try…"

"No, I appreciate what you did. I was the one that told you to give up on it, remember?" Satoshi reminded the boy.

"Ah, but I still didn't want to give up then. I went on another speech about friends the next day, and then the day after that, and on the day after _that _one she decided to dump my lunch on my head to get her feelings across. I think that's when I stopped, though only after getting a scolding from my mother."

"You were starved all day. I'm sorry…" Satoshi replied gently.

Keiichi waved his hand. "Don't worry, it's all in the past. I've forgotten about it now mostly, and you should too. If what Shion does really works, then I guess we can just disregard all these things she's done. And I hope to help in any way I can, too."

"Thanks, Keiichi. It really means a lot to me. I've been trying to get her to have some friends for months now…" the blonde-haired boy spoke.

"I didn't really want to give up in the first place," Keiichi said. "I was just a little concerned about my tactics, since that's the only thing I could really think of doing, and she seemed to fall asleep or just space out whenever I went on a ramble. I don't even know what I'm doing. I just talk about one thing and then in the next moment, I'm talking about another thing."

"I don't think that they were ineffective. They would have worked in any other situation." Satoshi looked a little apologetic, for some reason. "But I think that Shion has the right idea… if there is something that can get her to come out of her shell, it's competitions like the one she's in now. She wants to prove herself, and that requires interaction. Who knows? Maybe she'll find it fun and this kind of thing will happen again."

Keiichi rubbed the back of his head. "I feel a little silly for not thinking about it before…"

Satoshi grinned. "No, if it's anyone who should feel silly, it's me. I've been with Satoko all her life, remember?"

"Aha, yeah, true!"

Mion wouldn't assume that they would know anyways. The only reason why she had known in the first place was because she knew that information from another world. It was still interesting, though. Keiichi did have a habit of going on long speeches to prove his point, and often times they were effective because of how freaked out one would get at how many points he could bring up in such a short time. They all seemed to fit together like a puzzle pieces, too. But it seems that in this situation, Satoko just fell asleep. That was the problem with his tactics. If people didn't want to listen, then they don't. Of course, a lot of people just accepted what he was saying because of the quantity, but with someone like Satoko here who was just unimpressed by everything, it wouldn't work.

At least he had tried his hardest.

"I think it was really smart of her to come up with games. Whether or not she wants to admit it, I think that Satoko liked the game they played. I can't wait to see what else Shion has… I kind of want to play, too," Satoshi admitted.

"Me too! It looks like a lot of fun!" Keiichi cried. "And I've been waiting for a chance to show off my skills! I mean, I totally failed when playing Go Fish with Shion before, but this time, I'm determined not to!"

"Shion looks good. If she can give Satoko some competition, I know she'll be spending a lot of time trying to beat her," Satoshi replied. "I hope that this all works."

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah."

Everything was silent between the two boys for a while, and Mion thought about leaving then. Chie would wonder what was taking her so long in the bathroom if she didn't. However, just as soon as she had come to that conclusion, the two of them started up on another conversation.

"Hey, Satoshi?" Keiichi called.

"Yeah, what is it, Keiichi?" Satoshi asked. He blinked at the boy, wondering what it was. It was likely that he was starting up a new topic.

"You know, I've been wondering about something for a while…" Keiichi said. He looked away at the window, trying to distract himself. "It's about Shion…"

Mion's interest sparked when she heard her name being mentioned. What about her?

"Huh, about Shion? What about Shion?" Satoshi asked, voicing Mion's thoughts out loud.

Keiichi shuffled a little nervously. "I mean, it's been a little over a month since she's moved here and all, and we're all really good friends. But I think in this last week, I haven't really been able to look her in the eye and I've been feeling a little funny around her. I don't really know why, though." He looked over to the window again, slight red on his face. "I mean, we stayed after school one day and tried to have a conversation, but it was really odd. I mean, I kept repeating myself and she did, too, and we kept getting all silent… and then when I was helping her with math and I accidently touched her hand… and then there was the time where she helped me after school…" He shook his head. "It's just really odd."

Mion's face grew red at the topic. _Huh… what is he talking about? What does he mean by that?_

Satoshi raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What's this about? Are you just nervous around her, or…?"

"I don't know _what_ it is. It's really odd," Keiichi replied. "I just can't look her in the eye. …Am I just afraid of her subconsciously or something?"

Satoshi's reply was a burst of loud laughter, which startled both Keiichi and Mion. In fact, Mion nearly jumped, which would have blown her cover. That was the last thing she wanted to happen when spying on people who were talking about her. "Oh Keiichi, I don't know too much about what you're saying, but the last thing I'd think was that you're scared of her! Why would you offer her math help if you were scared of her?"

"Er… I don't know?" Keiichi replied. "I just… I don't know…? I was just thinking that because I have no idea why else I would be so nervous…"

"What did it feel like? What kind of nervous was it?" Satoshi asked the boy in his normal gentle, caring tone.

Keiichi crossed his arms over his chest and looked over to the ceiling. He tapped his foot on the ground as he thought. "Hm… let's see. It's like, I don't know… I couldn't look her in the eye, and my heart was racing a lot, and I kept spacing out and staring…"

"Aha, Keiichi?" Satoshi said.

"Er… yes, Satoshi?"

"I don't know much about the subject, but…" Satoshi gave him a wry smile. "I think that maybe, just maybe you _like_ her…"

"Huh? Of course I like her!" responded Keiichi, which again nearly caused Mion to jump. "Why wouldn't I like Shion? If I didn't like her, then… well, I guess I would have never offered to help her with her math!"

"No no! Keiichi, I mean _like_ like her. You know, like the romantic like, not the friendship kind of like." Satoshi paused.

Keiichi's eyes widened. "W-Wha? You can't be serious, Satoshi!" cried Keiichi. "It's nothing like that. We're friends, you know? Friends don't—"

"—Yes they can. If not, how do you think people like each other in the first place?" Satoshi smiled a little nervously. "As I said before, I don't know too much about it. I've never liked anyone, but in those romance books, they always mention those kinds of things happening to someone who is in love with someone else. …Well, maybe you're not in _love_ with her, that's taking it a bit far after all, but I'm sure that you have something that's a little more than just a normal crush."

Keiichi looked down at his shoes. "I don't know… is that really it?" he asked, blushing. "I mean, I don't think I like her…"

Satoshi shrugged. "You could, and I think you do." He walked over to the boy, who still seemed a little unsure. He placed hand on his shoulder, reassuring the boy. "Just give yourself some time to figure it out, okay?"

Keiichi nodded.

"Well, we better be getting back to class…"

As soon as Mion heard that, she jumped in alarm. She glanced about, and without running too fast, went back to the classroom. She tried not to make her footsteps too loud, but it was very tricky. She plopped back down in her seat, hoping that they didn't hear her.

_That was… a very interesting conversation. _After hearing what Keiichi said, was it possible that Keiichi liked her? She felt what Keiichi was describing he felt. Her heart would race around him, she wouldn't be able to look him in the eye… It seemed to be the same feeling. _Is it really true, then? Could Kei-chan like me? I guess he doesn't know for himself yet… but…_

"I think he does!" Rion cried from out of nowhere, scaring Mion half to death. She had not been expecting the goddess to appear like that suddenly. "I think he does, Mion!"

Mion got over her shock and looked at the goddess, who had a huge, excited grin on her face. She was bouncing up and down, and wore a look that resembled the look of a child when they were told they were getting a new toy. She wondered why Rion was so excited for her, but she just smiled at the goddess. She felt good knowing that the goddess was so happy about it.

"Do you think so?" Mion whispered.

Rion nodded eagerly and quickly. "Mhm! Mhm! I think he really does. I was sure of it before, but now I'm sure _sure_ of it! I think that you should ask him out."

Mion blinked at her. "Really…?"

Rion nodded again. "Yeah! Do it!"

Mion wondered if she really could. If Keiichi really did like her, and if she asked him out, then the two of them would be together, right? But Keiichi wasn't sure of his own feelings for her yet, it seemed. Perhaps if she gave him just a little time to figure it out. If he really did like her, it was possible that he would say yes when she asked him out, and then…

Mion smiled. "Okay," she whispered. "I'm going to give him a little time, though."

"Yay!" Rion cried out, jumping up and down. "I think that things are really getting better!"

_Yes… _Mion thought as she watched the goddess, _they really are…_

_~~~~X~~~~_

When lunch came up, so did the event that Mion had been waiting for. The group pulled their desks together, as usual, and sat down. Before any of them brought out their lunches, however, they looked to Rika, who simply nodded.

"Mii, I think that you all should judge," Rika told her friends. "Then we vote and see who the winner is. But don't vote for anyone just because you want them to win, vote for the one who you really think is best so that we can win fair and square!"

"Of course," Satoshi said, "that's what this contest is about, isn't it?'

Rika reached into her backpack and pulled out her bento box. However, she didn't open it, and instead set it shut in the middle of the cluster of desks. She sat down in her seat, waiting for the other girl to arrive.

Satoko slowly walked over and sat her own lunch down next to Rika's. She seemed a little hesitant to sit down, but she eventually did, plopping right down in the seat. "Yeah, don't vote for Furude-san because she's your friend or anything. You have to vote for the one that is best!" she said seriously, clearly worried that the voting would be off because she wasn't friends with the group at the table. She sat there for a while, just staring at the two bento boxes.

"Okay, so all we get is a little taste of each…" Shion explained. "We can have enough for all then, okay? Satoko and Rika get to try each other's, too. Don't be greedy!" Shion briefly looked to Keiichi, and then back to the bento boxes. "Okay, so we're judging this fair and square. No voting for Rika because she's sweet. Chose you who really think is best."  
>"Yeah, so pick me!" Satoko said.<p>

Shion cracked the tiniest of smiles. "Well, we'll see who is best!" She then reached to the center of the table and removed the lids from the bento boxes.

Neither of them had made anything fancy. It was basically just what they would have for lunch every day. It was a real test of skill, then. They could not judge based on which was fancier, but which was truly better tasting. Despite this, they were both very neatly made. There seemed to be no flaws from what anyone could tell by glancing. Nothing was mixing together that wasn't intended to be mixed together, nothing was spilled about, and nothing seemed to be burnt… It all looked perfect.

Mion reached for a piece of Rika's meat with her chopsticks and chewed slowly. As usual, Rika had taken time to cook this meat, and she knew exactly when she was supposed to stop cooking it. It had some nice sauce on it, too, though it was quite light. Not that that was a bad thing, though. It contrasted well with the flavor of the meat, and had it been heavy it probably wouldn't have gone as well with the meat.

Mion then reached for Satoko's meat and bit into it. It was very slightly overcooked, though the powerful sauce that had been drizzled on it hid it. The sauce was heavier and a little more flavorful, which was probably a good thing considering the meat was a little overcooked.

She reached to taste some vegetables from each dish. It was hard to tell the difference between them, really. They were both well cooked and not a single piece was burnt. Everything had been cooked to perfection, and it was not overcooked or undercooked. Mion had to call a tie on the vegetables.

Next, she tried the rice. Again, there wasn't much difference. Perhaps Satoko's had a tad bit too much salt? That was probably her being picky, though.

Mion looked to the rest of her friends to see their reactions. Everyone looked quite pleased as they ate the food. Rika and Satoko were good cooks, so Mion would have been surprised to see any other kind of reaction from then. It would be a close call.

"Wow, Rika-cha and Satoko are both really good!" cried Keiichi. "Man, you two make me want to learn how to cook. It's kind of sad, though, since I know I'm never going to be nearly as good as you two!"

Rika smiled sweetly. "Thank you for telling me that, Keiichi. But you shouldn't say something like that, since I know that you can be a very good cook if you were to try! Nipah!"

_Except he isn't._ Mion had had a contest like this in the past with all the club members. Keiichi hadn't been very good at it at all, and it was only luck that Rika had to be disqualified for stealing her lunch from her classmates. She could have very well cooked her own food, seeing as she was really good, but she had explained afterwards that she had too much homework and could not find time to cook. Mion had been the one that won that contest, but that was only because she had gone an extra mile and cooked some fancy dinner to ensure her victory. That was probably the only reason why she had won. Here, though, it was a test of true taste, seeing as Satoko and Rika hadn't cooked anything too fancy.

"Thanks, Rika-chan. Maybe I'll get my mom to tell me how to cook sometime! I'm kind of sick of eating instant ramen when my mom and dad are away." He reached for another piece of meat, but was met by Satoko's glare.

"Hey, my brother hasn't tried any yet! You have to wait for him to try first!" she growled.

Keiichi looked surprised. "Ah, sorry about that, Satoko!"

Satoshi reached for Satoko's meat and began eating it. As soon as she had, Keiichi reached for another piece and wolfed it down. He couldn't get enough of either of their food. It was just too good.

"Okay, has everyone gotten to try each lunch?" Mion asked.

Everyone nodded.

"Okay, good! So we're going to write our vote down on paper." Mion reached into her bag and got out her notebook. She ripped out a sheet of paper and tore it into several pieces, handing each friend aside from Satoko and Rika a piece. "Grab a pencil and write down which meal you liked best. Remember, no bias!"

Mion looked at her sheet and tapped the desk with her pencil. She wondered what she should write down. Both meals were good… but was there a better one? Well, there was the problem of Satoko's meat being a little overcooked, but that was about it. Besides, the sauce she had added covered that up. But then again... Did she have another factor to judge on? No, she didn't. Sighing, Mion wrote down Rika's name. Her food had only been slightly better.

"Okay, do we all have our votes?" Mion asked.

"Yeah!" everyone cried.

"Okay!" Mion responded. "So let's do it like this now. On the count of three, we all show each other the pieces and whom we voted for. Then we can see who the winner is!" She paused for a moment to allow them all to nod their heads in understanding. "Okay… One, two, three!"

Everyone held up their strips of paper, and Mion looked around. Keiichi had voted for Satoko, Shion had voted for Rika, Satoshi had voted for Rika, and she had voted for Rika.

"I guess that Rika wins!" Mion cried.

"_Huh?_" Satoko cried. She looked at the votes, confused. Then, she looked to Rika's meal, and after to her own. "But mine was _so_ much better than Furude-san's!" she yelled stubbornly.

"I liked yours better," Keiichi replied.

"I thought yours was a little overcooked," Satoshi said with an apologetic look on his face. "But that's about it. Otherwise, it was perfect! That was the only thing there was to decide on and had Rika messed up just a tad more, I think I would have chosen you."  
>Rika smiled. "Mii, I loved Satoko's food."<p>

Shion nodded in agreement. "I was going to vote for Satoko, but then I realized the meat was a little overdone. Next time, try cooking it for… maybe a minute less?"

Satoko crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly as she looked about. "I still think mine is better and that I'm a better cook, no matter what you all say!" she cried out. "I just messed up this once! I'm sure that Furude-san really can't compare!"

"You tried Rika-chan's food, Satoko," Satoshi said, "was it good?"

Satoko hesitated. She looked at Rika's food. "Well, I mean… it was good and all, but I still think I'm better!"

Rika looked at the other young girl and smiled. "How good was it, Satoko?" she asked very sweetly.

"It was really good! I mean, really good. I think that it's the second best." She realized what she had just said and then looked away. "Maybe. But I'm still better."

Satoshi sighed and shook his head, realizing that his sister wasn't about to give in and admit that Rika's was a little better than her own.

"Whatever, I just made a tiny mistake!" Satoko cried stubbornly. "Just think whatever you want, but I'm still better!" The girl snatched up her bento box, and with that, turned away and went back to her desk to finish up what was left of her lunch.

Satoshi looked at his sister, slowly shaking his head. "I'm sorry about that, Rika-chan… Satoko is just like that. Well, you know how she is… I think she knows that yours was a little better and that you could be better, but she doesn't want to admit it. So don't think too much about what she just said, okay?" he said, turning to the blue-haired girl.

"I know," Rika replied. "I could tell by how she was acting! She seemed a little reluctant. I think that Satoko's was good, but I think that she could have been a little more careful. The rice was a tad salty too. But that doesn't matter, I don't think… It only matters if you pour and pour salt on it! Nipah!"

Shion smiled. "Well, at least Satoko knows it on the inside, right? Maybe she'll admit it out loud one day."

Rika shook her head. "She's not going to go down without a fight. It's okay, though. I liked Satoko's food and she is a good cook. I don't want to get into a fight, because I think that we are equal in terms of cooking and I don't like fights!"

"You're such a good girl, Rika-chan…" Keiichi said.

Rika smiled. "I try my best to be good! Mr. Cat tells me the same thing, sometimes!"

Mion was happy with how nice Rika was being to Satoko. The two of them were best friends in her world, and so they could easily become best friends in this world, too. Even if Satoko refused to admit it, Rika had beaten her in the contest fair and square. She had learned something from this. Perhaps tomorrow something would become of it. Maybe Satoko would come and sit with them again.

Well, maybe not, but at least she could hope, right?

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**I was going to wait until tomorrow afternoon to finish it, but I'm glad I didn't. This is shorter than the last few chapters, but we need a short chapter. I'm glad this chapter was so short. **

**Okay, so I'm going to be quick and get to the point. This is probably the only time I will update this week. I told you all about what's going on in terms of school next week, and if you couldn't tell, I have a ton of assignments. I have Cs in tons of classes, and the quarter is about to end (it'll end maybe two weeks after we get back from spring break, actually). These are the last major assignments we are having for the quarter and the last few chances to get our grades up. I need to get As on all of these things. So I cannot afford to write anymore this week. I know… it's a little annoying to get one chapter this week, but grades come before WAN. That being said, if I find time on Sunday, I may write another short chapter. I doubt it, though. **

**Thank you all for understanding. I can make it up to you during spring break, but for now, I have to study. I do have a English project I have to do over the break, but that's it. I'll have plenty of time to write, and I don't need to follow my Friday-Sunday-Tuesday schedule.**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: What in the world is up with the number of paragraph scrunches I just had to destroy in this chapter? That being said, I hope I didn't miss any.**


	20. Chapter 19: Love

**Crimso's Notes V.3**

**SPRING BREAAAAAAK! Yeah, I've been waiting for this date since the moment I stepped into school after Winter Break! Really, the last few days have been stressful enough. I have time to relax and do nothing now, aside from writing chapters for you guys and hoping I can do my science fair project (and an English project) but I refuse to think about school.**

**Note: I'm just moving at the pace of each chapter = the day after the day in the previous chapter right now. Unless I say otherwise, it would be best to assume this for most chapters.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Nineteen: Love_

The next day, Mion found herself at her desk in front of her homework. She didn't care about whatever the page said, for she was now lost in thought. She was thinking about the things that had happened over the previous days, and how things had improved very quickly, much to her delight. Satoko had warmed up just a bit, like the sun had come out and melted away a thin layer of snow before hiding itself behind the clouds once again. She knew there was a long way to ago until the girl would actually accept them as her friends, but at least she had made some progress on the subject.

The next thing was Keiichi. She couldn't help but blush just a tad when she thought about the boy, and what exactly had happened the day before. She had walked in on him and Satoshi talking about her, and Satoshi had suggested to Keiichi that he liked her. She didn't know if Keiichi had thought about it yet, but…

Mion glanced to the boy, who looked right up from his work and stared at her. As quickly as their eyes met, however, they looked away. Keiichi now wore a warm blush on his face as he looked down at his homework, taping his pencil nervously on his desk. From what she could tell, there were signs that the boy liked her, but she wasn't too sure what to make of them. Did he really like her, or was she just seeing things?

"Don't think negatively. Assume the best for these situations!" Rion told Mion cheerfully. "You're never going to get anywhere in life if you think about the worst case scenario every time a possibility comes up. Think about all the things that you will miss out on if you do. What if you assume that he doesn't like you, and it turns out he does, but because you didn't ask him out he moves on?" She questioned the girl, though with a rather light tone. However, the way she spoke was effective and somehow serious despite her voice. "You can't think that way, or it will become truth!"

Mion wondered if Rion was really right. If she were to assume the worst and not say anything about it, would he really move on? Well, there was no one to move on to at the moment. But… still, he could just move on and not have a crush on anyone. There didn't need to be another girl for him to drop his crush on her, if he even had one in the first place. Nothing came from assuming the worst, unless the worst was indeed true. However, the likelihood that it was the worst seemed to be smaller than slightly better than the worst or somewhere in between, so it seemed that everything else was a lot more favorable.

"So I think that you should tell him today," Rion concluded. "I think it would be good for you, and imagine the many things that could happen if you confessed to him! You two could kiss, hug, or just spend a lot of time together… it would be nice, wouldn't it?"

Mion thought about that, and soon enough, she was engulfed in one of her daydreams. Keiichi and her were sitting in the fields of Hinamizawa, where no one was aside from the two of them. The only noise was the songs sung by the higurashi cicadas as they buzzed around and the rapid beating of the two teenager's hearts. Mion's side was pressed up against the boy's, her fingers reached towards his and intertwining them. He would reach his arm out and wrap it around her shoulder, pulling her just a little closer. Then, they would lean their heads in and rest them together, enjoying the view and the presence of each other…

It was really a wonderful vision. And all of that could just be true if she were to ask Keiichi out.

She looked to Rion, who nodded her head with a confident smile on her face. "You can do it."

Mion smiled and nodded back. Maybe, just maybe, if she worked up the courage, she would do it.

As of lately, Rion had been really been the person to encourage her to do these things. She would appear to chat with her, often telling her that things weren't so bad and how she thought Mion could make things better. Usually, in these situations, she would ask Shion for support, but she was not the person to go to when it dealt with things like how to fit in with an alternate universe. If she were to go up to her and talk about it, then Shion would be horribly confused.

Of course, that didn't mean that Shion was of no support. Shion was always the type of person who she could rely on, no matter what the situation. At night, they would chat about things that were going on with them, a lot of it involving their love lives. Shion hadn't made any progress with Satoshi, it seemed. The two of them were still just close friends. Satoshi didn't look at her with any romantic intent in his eyes, as far as Mion could tell. He would just smile at her, like how a friend would smile at another friend. She hoped that one day, he would acknowledge her as something more than that, but she wasn't sure how she could help her sister.

Mion felt a little bad. What would Shion say if she and Keiichi were to get together when she was still longing for Satoshi to return her feelings? Shion could be very jealous at times, and she didn't want her to get too jealous. While she could easily repress those feelings, it did eat away at her from the inside very slowly. She tried not to take much notice of it, though, and was just happy for her sister.

…Was Shion like that in this world? Shion was usually jealous over her sister being so close to Keiichi when the boy she loved was in a coma, maybe never to wake up, and even if he were, in a few years. Mion didn't think that that trait of her would just disappear because of that reason. She could be jealous for other reasons, but not related to love.

Well, she certainly hoped not. Shion would accept her no matter what the case was, even if she was a tad jealous on the inside. That was just the way her sister was.

Rion gestured towards Shion and Satoshi, who were now sitting together. Satoshi was wearing an extremely confused and troubled look on his face as he looked down at his paper, trying to comprehend just what it said. Shion was pointing at the paper, explaining just what the assignment was about cheerfully. Shion was not good at academics in the slightest, but when it came to teaching Satoshi, was glad to share what she knew. Mion smiled slightly at her sister. She looked so happy to be teaching Satoshi, to be so close to him. In her world, Shion would probably kill just to spend this kind of time with him, even if it was only once. In this world, she could be happy.

"I'm glad that Shion is happy in this world," Mion whispered under her breath, so that Keiichi couldn't hear it at all. "I think that if she couldn't be, I would be desperately searching for a way to get back, even if it was impossible."

Rion smiled at the girl when she heard those words. "I'm glad that you're okay with things here, I just feel a little guilty at times…"

Rion was not to blame for such things. She wondered why she constantly felt worried about what Mion felt of this world when she had saved her life. If she hadn't sent her to this world, she would be dead. That was all there was to it, and there was no reason to be mad at her. Then again, Rion was the type of person to worry about things like that. She didn't like to see people mad or unhappy.

"I hope Shion and Satoshi can find love," Rion said as she looked to the two teenagers.

Mion nodded her head. "Yeah. I really hope so too."

"All right!" Chie suddenly cried out, cutting off whatever thoughts that Mion had swirling about in her head. "That's it for studying session! It's lunch time now!"

The room filled with cheer from the children, and the moment she spoke was the moment all the children began pushing their work aside, glad to have a break from work for once. Lunch was everyone's favorite time of the school day, Mion decided. It was hers too. In fact, her friends had already started pushing their desks together. Snapping out of her thoughts, Mion began to put her work away and stood up so that she could clash her desk against Keiichi's. Today, she had leftovers from last night's meal. It wasn't anything special, but it would still be tasty nevertheless.

All of her friends sat down at the table, smiles on their faces. "Mii, I'm so glad! I was starting to drown in all that math homework and my poor head had had enough of fractions!" Rika said as she opened up the lid to her bento box, revealing food that looked good enough to cause anyone within a few feet of it to drool. "And now I can finally enjoy what I've been looking forward to all day!"

"I agree with you, that homework was really confusing," Satoshi said. "I think I get it now, though. It's just that you… uh…" His face twisted into a frustrated look. "Um…"

Shion giggled at the boy. "Oh Satoshi-kun, did you really forget that quickly?" She did not seem the slightest bit mad at him, something that was hardly surprising.

"I'm sorry, Shion," Satoshi said apologetically as he looked down at his lap in shame.

But Shion just smiled. "Well that's okay, we can talk about it again as soon as lunch is over!"

"Speaking of lunch…" Keiichi said. He looked down at his bento box and licked his lips as he took off the top, staring at what had been made for his lunch. "I have a particularly well made lunch today! So let's chow down!"

Rika put on her usual cute smile. "Mii, I think that's a really good idea. These pieces of meat are just waiting to be eaten! They are calling my name!" She picked up her chopsticks as she looked at her meat, deciding which piece to take first.

"Alright, let's eat!"

The friends dug into their meals, and as they allowed themselves to get indulged in the taste, everyone decided to remain silent. All Mion thought about was how good her meal was, even if it was just leftovers. The fact that it was from last night could not get rid of the fact that it was well cooked. Sometimes, leftover food didn't taste very good after a while, but this was not the case with the lunch that she had brought today. She could enjoy it no matter what it was.

The silence went on longer than usual for some reason. And it wasn't until something odd occurred did the silence break.

Mion heard the sound of something plopping down on the table. She turned around, and shock filled her as she realized that Satoko was standing right in front of them, her bento box on the table as she looked at everyone at the table. There was a somewhat hard to read look on her face, but if Mion had to describe it, it was slight annoyance at herself for letting herself be so close to people, as well as some embarrassment, as something like this probably hurt the whole "I don't need to be with people" mask she put on.

"_Satoko_?" Satoshi said in shock. "What in the world—"

Satoko stubbornly pointed to her bento box. "I made it better this time," she told them all. "It's not overcooked anymore and I went easy on the salt."

Everyone blinked at her, wondering just what she wanted. Satoko crossed her arms over her chest and looked away, not wanting anyone to see the expression on her face.

When no one moved, Satoko turned around, an irritated look on her face. "Well, what in the world are you waiting for? Try it!" she snapped. "I made it so that you can realize that I'm good, so…"

Mion smiled and nodded at the girl. She slowly reached out and removed the lid, revealing the same exact lunch that Satoko had made yesterday. Mion glanced about the table at everyone, and nodded to them to silently say that it was okay for them to try Satoko's food now. Mion reached for a piece of meat with her chopsticks, and then slowly placed it in her mouth and chewed. It was indeed no longer overcooked, the meat having been cooked for the perfect amount of time. It was neither a minute more than needed nor a minute less. She had clearly watched her meat carefully as she cooked it.

"Wow, this is really good," Mion spoke as she finished chewing and swallowing her meat. "A lot better than yesterday."

Satoko stuck out her chest and placed her hands on her hips, a triumphant look painting her face. "Well yeah, what did you expect from me? I'm the best, obviously," she boasted.

"I agree!" cried Shion. "These vegetables are great, too! Not overcooked, not undercooked, and just the right amount of salt to bring the flavor out without ruining it!" She turned to Satoshi. "What do you think, Satoshi-kun?"

"I definitely agree," Satoshi said with a gentle smile on his face. "It's great, Satoko."

A huge grin broke out across her face. "Yeah! It is really great!" She turned to Rika, placing her hands on her hips once again as she looked at the slightly older girl. "You tell me, Furude-san. Do you like it?"

"Mii, I love it, Satoko!" Rika cried. "It tastes really good. I agree with what the others said. You didn't overcook it or undercook it, and there's just enough salt. I don't think that you made a single mistake." She brought her hands together and began to clap them again and again. "I think that Satoko deserves an applause!"

Everyone at the table clapped gently for the girl, and when they did, her smile got even bigger.

"Well, I'm glad that you enjoyed my food! …As expected of course." Satoko reached for a nearby chair with her foot and plopped herself down on it, grinning. "So, do you think that I beat you now, Rika? Is my food better than yours?"

"I think it is a tie," Rika replied. "We're both equal."

Satoko huffed. "That's not good enough, I want to be better than you. Or are you just saying that because you don't want to admit that I'm better?"

Satoshi shot his sister a look. "That's enough, Satoko," he told her gently. "You're getting carried away, and I think that you're on equal amounts of skill, too."

Satoko looked annoyed by that statement, as if she wouldn't take the idea that there was someone better than her, or equal to her. She had to be better than Rika no matter what.

"Well fine then!" Satoko cried in annoyance. "I'll just have to make a meal that's even better than this one next time!"

"You don't have to," Keiichi told the girl. "You know that being equal to everyone else doesn't mean that you're bad? You can't be the best at anything. Heh, trust me on that one! I learned it the hard way."

Satoko, who had her chair turned so that her elbow rest on the table and her hand cupped her cheek while the other hand tapped its fingers on the table, looked at him out of the corner of his eye and grumbled.

"Kei-chan's right," Mion replied. "I always try to beat people at cards and games, but it's okay to tie as well! Then that way, you both win and everyone's happy." She turned towards the girl, an idea lighting up her thoughts. "Oh, why don't you come again tomorrow and we'll play a game? I know this one game I think you'll really like. We'll all play it together."

Satoko didn't look like she was even going to consider that idea.

"Come on, you can prove to us that you're better than us at a game if that's how you feel about it," Mion told her. She knew that a simple game wouldn't prove such a thing, but it would certainly get the girl's attention.

It worked. Satoko's face lit up at the mention of such a thing, and she flipped her chair right back to its normal position. "Okay then, I'll show you all that I'm better than everyone here then!"

"Good! We'll have a lot of fun."

"Okay, that's done. Now I'll just have to eat this lovely lun—" When Satoko looked down at her lunch, she discovered that there was none left, much to her horror. Everyone in the group had eaten it right up. "Now I'm going to be starved all day!" she complained. "Great, just _great_!" She allowed her face to fall down on the desk, grumbling.

Rika looked at the girl, a little worried. She reached out and tapped her repeatedly with her chopsticks. Satoko looked up and at Rika, a confused and a tad annoyed expression on her face.

Rika pushed her open bento box towards the girl. "I have a lot of food and I ate a lot of yours. Do you want the rest of mine?"

Satoko's face lit up. "Yes!" she cried out. Rika set the bento box in front of her, and she began to dig into the meal happily. She clearly was enjoying the taste of the food that Rika had made, judging by the expression that was painted on her face, though not that she would ever admit it. In her head, she was probably just thinking that she was better, though that technically wasn't true. They really both were equal in terms of cooking, and it had always been impossible to judge which of the two were better, save for last time when Satoko had messed up a little.

"Say thank you, Satoko," sighed Satoshi.

"Mii, it's okay. She's thanking me in her head even if she doesn't say it out loud, and that's enough for me! I'm glad to help out someone! Nipah!" Rika said cheerfully, the expression on her face reinforcing her words. She really didn't care at all, did she?

Mion smiled as she looked at Satoko. Yes, things were moving slowly with her. Perhaps the game they were going to play tomorrow would help her a little more. She knew the game that she had picked was a game that Satoko in her world really loved and was really good at, so she was sure she would be good at the game in this world, too. Even if she weren't, though, it would still be fine.

It would be nice if she learned not to be so arrogant, after all.

_~~~~X~~~~_

When school ended, Mion debated over whether or not to catch Keiichi and ask him out. She had promised Rion that she would but now that the moment was going to happen, she could feel a weight made completely of lead filling her stomach and rising up to her throat. She felt nervousness and fear dance about in every vein of her body, and she wasn't sure fi she could actually do it. What if he said no? What would she do, then?

"Come on, Mion," Rion said right in her ear. "You can do this…"

_I can…?_ Mion wondered if that was true. She watched as the boy began packing up all his books and various items that seemed to have scatted about his desk. He had been doing some serious work today, it seemed. She gulped. If she asked him now, then could things get better?

"Remember what Shion told you that one time?" Rion reminded her. "It wasn't too long ago, maybe a night or two. She told you that you should act on your feelings and be brave about them. Shion isn't shy about hers, but she hasn't asked him out yet because he doesn't like her back right now. You have a different situation."

In fact, Mion did remember Shion saying something like that. She had remarked a night or two ago that they were getting pretty close, and that if Mion wanted to, she could ask Keiichi out sometime. When Mion had protested against it, Shion had just told her to be brave about it. The worst that could happen was that he would reject her and she would move on to find someone else.

She wondered if it was really that easy to find someone else, though. What other boys were there besides Satoshi and Keiichi? The last thing she wanted to do was snatch Satoshi up from her sister. Sure, she had had a crush on Satoshi before Keiichi moved in, but she had given up on that idea when she had seen how much her sister cared for the boy. Her sister's feelings mattered more, and that crush was more like attraction to him simply because he was the only one around her of the opposite sex. It was different with Keiichi, though. That she felt was something special… something different. It wasn't the same feeling.

"Mion," Rion told her gently, "he likes you. He's not going to reject you, remember?"

Mion thought back to the conversation she had overheard the other day. If Keiichi really liked her, then there was no way that he would reject her. Judging by what he had said about her the other day, it was pretty clear that the boy liked her back. He had described a feeling… the feeling of the heart beating rapidly with the sound of a drum, the feeling of the cheeks becoming hot and red, the nervousness that spread throughout the stomach… It was the same feeling she got around him, and she knew she had that feeling because she loved him. So if it was the same feeling, then…

_Come on, Mion. You stood up to a woman with a gun, you can just ask him a question. It's no big deal… it's nothing like standing in front of the barrel of a gun…_

Keiichi slung his backpack over his shoulder and began to walk away. As he stepped towards the door, Mion realized that if she was going to ask him out, she had to act quickly. She opened her mouth to yell, but no words came out. _Come on, Mion! Just say you want to meet with him and that's all you have to do… right now. _She gulped once again, and then took a deep breath.

"Kei-chan!" she called out to him.

The boy whipped around to look at her. "Huh, what is it, Shion?" he asked the girl. He then turned his body fully around so that they were facing each other, wondering just what it was that the girl wanted to talk to him about.

Mion clenched her fist into a tight ball. She had to do this. "Kei-chan, can we talk for a brief moment? Just a brief moment…"

Keiichi blinked at the girl, slightly confused. "Ah, okay… That's fine, then," he responded.

With that, the two of them began to walk outside behind the school building. All the while, Mion clutched the strap of her bag tightly as nervousness sprouted in her stomach. It would not be long before she had to admit everything to him… In fact, she had a minute or two. Then she would hear his answer.

The two of them stood outside the building, facing each other.

"So, what exactly did you want to talk to me about?" Keiichi asked the girl.

Mion felt her feet shuffle about as she looked at the blades of grass below, waving back and forth in the very slight breeze. "Well, that's…" Butterflies danced in her stomach and shook her body, clumping up in her throat and stopping any more words from coming out of her mouth. She didn't know what to say.

"I-I-I… I have to ask you something!" she managed to blurt out. She looked up right into his eyes, and felt a burning sensation in her cheeks like never before. It was as if someone had stuffed her mouth full of red peppers and then proceeded to light them on fire. The blaze was now spreading throughout her body, and she felt a little from the heat. She wiped off a beat of sweat and told herself that August was just hot, so that had to be the reason why her cheeks were so red and hot.

Keiichi seemed to notice her body language, and his cheeks became a slight pink. "Ah…. Ask me w-what?" he asked her.

Mion looked down at her legs. Were they shaking? No… she just felt as if they were. The emotions in her body made her feel as if there was an earthquake going on, but there was no shaking from the ground and none of her actual body. It was all inside her head.

She knew that there was nothing else to be said now but to ask him out. That what was going to come next. She opened her mouth, thinking that she could just say it right out if she did so quickly. However, she choked right up. The words just wouldn't roll off her tongue. She grew a lump in the back of her throat that sat there, causing an even more uncomfortable feeling in her body. She opened her mouth once again, but quickly shut it again as she was hit with another wave of nervous butterflies scattering about in her stomach.

Her heart was now beating at a dangerous rate, and Mion wondered if it was even healthy for her heart to be beating so fast. The pounding was beginning to get louder and louder and it was beginning to ache a little. It was rather uncomfortable, to say the very least. "I—…" She nearly choked on her own words again, but she caught herself. "I want…."

Keiichi blinked at her. "Huh…? You want…?"

"I… want…"she squeaked. _Damn it, Sonozaki Mion! You're not a nervous little kid, you're a cool tomboy, a teenager! You don't get choked up over this stuff… this should be easy! …Wait, isn't it because I'm a tomboy that this is so hard? _She shook those thoughts out of her head. She couldn't be thinking about that at this time! The tomboy issue didn't matter. If he liked her… then…!

She clenched her fists together. She had always been told that it was better to get things over with. As nervousness threatened to choke her up again, she felt a small opening. It was just a brief one, just enough time to speak until the nervous feeling got the best of her. It was a moment of confidence, a moment of bravery. And yet, she could barely find her words. As she opened her mouth one more time, she felt a wave of silence coming up, and she knew she had to speak or it would never happen.

"…I want to go out with you!" she declared loudly.

As soon as she spoke those words, she shut her eyes and looked down at the ground, not wanting to see how Keiichi reacted to such words, even if that was the reason why she had told him in the first place. What if he looked confused? What if he laughed at such a statement? She forced her eyelids to shut even tighter to the point where her face scrunched up and became uncomfortable. It didn't make it any harder to see his reaction, but she felt the need to do so.

"S-Shion…" she heard Keiichi choke out. "You want to… go out with me?" he asked. "As in… date? Boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Mion opened her mouth to say yes, but could only find the courage to nod her head ever so slightly. She wondered why words were failing her. It wasn't too hard just to say a few words, was it?

She wanted to block out any more words from her ears, but she did not want to cover her ears. She did not want Keiichi to see her do that, it would be a little odd and rude. Then how was she supposed to avoid hearing what he had to say next? She looked down at the ground and focused on the grass below her. The blades had grown quite long… perhaps someone needed to cut it?

"…Me too…" Keiichi suddenly spoke up, the same nervousness tattering up his usually confident voice and shaking it right up.

Mion's eyes shot right open and her head lifted right up. Keiichi was looking at her, a fiery blush over his face. When he saw her looking at him, he nearly jumped, but managed to stay on the ground just barely. "Huh…?" Had she heard him right? Had he just said…? A spark of hope lit her stomach, killing off some off the nervous butterflies. Yet, she did not let that spark destroy them all or engulf her. It would be getting her hopes up. She had been distracting herself, and did not know if her ears had decided to play a cruel trick on her.

"I-I said," Keiichi spoke in his shaky voice, "me too, Shion! I w-want to go out with you, too!"

Mion's green eyes grew to the size of platters, and that spark of hope twisted into a blaze of joy and excitement. She knew that her ears did not joke her that time, she had rally heard what he had just said. "R-Really?" Mion stuttered out, not sure if she could believe it.

Keiichi nodded firmly. "Y-Yeah!" he replied.

Mion allowed herself to smile, feeling relief grow throughout her body. There was no reason to be nervous anymore if he had admitted such a thing, yet, there was still a tad left. "Kei-chan!" she cried. Without thinking, she ran up to him and pulled him into the tightest embrace that she could manage. She didn't even know what she was doing; it was as if her body was being controlled by a remote.

"S-Shi…!" Keiichi stuttered in shock, surprising by how strong Mion's grip on him was and how suddenly she had done that. Mion was sure that she would be too if Keiichi had done that to her, it was just too sudden.

"I'm so happy, Kei-chan…!" she spoke without thinking, allowing all her emotions to flow out. With all that nervous build up and emotions shaking her body, she needed to let everything out. "I'm so happy, I was so scared that you would say no or that you would laugh at me… but…!"

Mion felt gentle yet shaky hands slowly begin to wrap around her, hugging her right back though not nearly as tightly as Mion had done. "I-I was going to ask you sometime, but I was kind of scared too…" he admitted. "I-I realized yesterday that… I… liked you. I mean, I felt it all along, but only yesterday did the feeling come to me…"

The two of them broke off the hug so that they could look into each other's eyes, though Mion's hands remained on Keiichi's shoulders. "Do you really mean it, Kei-chan? Do you really like me?" she asked the boy with confidence in her voice. "Or…?"  
>Keiichi grinned at her in a cheesy way. "Of course, I-I wouldn't lie about something like that. That would just be cruel. I really like you, Shion. And if you would be my girlfriend… then…"<p>

"Of course!" Mion blurted out without thinking. She was doing that a lot right now, she realized. Perhaps her brain just wasn't in a thinking mood today. "And you, my boyfriend!"

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah!"

Mion felt warmth grow inside her at the acceptance. Never in the world did she truly think that this moment was going to come, but it had. Keiichi and her were together now. Nothing else seemed to matter at that moment to Mion. All she could think about was Keiichi, the times that would come now that they were together, and how happy she was that they were now together. Only did she ever wish for something like this to happen, but she did so with the knowledge and thought that it would never really happen, no matter how much she wished for it. But this was reality now. Keiichi loved her, and she loved him.

It was like she was within a dream right now.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner v.3**

**First chapter of Spring Break! More is to come. I probably won't write tomorrow but we'll see what comes up on Sunday. During Spring Break, my sleeping schedule is different. During school, I stay awake until three AM on Fridays and Saturdays, and every other day I go to sleep at twelve AM or earlier. However, during breaks I go to sleep at three AM every day. So I have more time to do the things I want, and more time to write, too! We'll see what happens to the Friday-Sunday-Tuesday schedule. I may or may not be following it over the break.**

**And yay for KeiMion fluff! They got together pretty earlier on in this fic, huh? Well, not really… it is the middle of the fic, after all. Well, you get what I mean by that. Earlier than usual in my fics. I like writing KeiMion, it's so much fun! That being said, I also enjoy writing those scenes with Satoko. She's so different in this world and it's so interesting developing her character. Yeah, I like writing this stuff!**

**I've been feeling oddly dizzy recently. It's… weird. Oh well, I'll get over it. Maybe I'm just tired. Anyways, thanks for waiting a week as I got work sorted out! I'm glad you all understood.**

**~Crimso**

**P.S: This is a boring chapter title. I was going to call it Arrogance, but that only fit for Satoko and it would be odd to call a chapter with that last scene by that name.**


	21. Chapter 20: Worries

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**OF ALL THE WORST THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN, THIS IS **_**THE**_**. **_**WORST**_**. **_**POSSIBLE**_**. **_**THING**_**! Okay, excuse me, that **_**is**_** a bit of an exaggeration… a bit. But so is losing a ribbon or forgetting the plates. I was doing some stuff last night.. I forget what it was… but I got up to go to the refrigerator, and when I came back… I noticed something… odd.. about my headphones. They had broken inside my computer and now a small piece is stuck inside and I can't use my sound at all, not even with the headphones. And I have no idea how to fix it or get it out. And this all happens two days AFTER I get out from school, where they could have easily fixed it? Now I have to wait two weeks with no sound from my computer, unless I stick the broken headphone piece still attached to the actual headphones in and put it in directly at the right angle and spot while practically using all my strength to actually connect the pieces… And that's hard to do. Do you know how hard it was for me to watch Mirai Nikki 22, the most dramatic episode of the series? (I think?). Yeah. How am I going to write without music? Sorry for the long notes.**

**Note: This starts out a little while after the last chapter ended, despite what I said last chapter.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty: Worries_

Mion burst into her house, running down the halls without worrying about any servants yelling at her for doing so, and then burst through her door and fell onto her futon. Her eyes were wide with excitement as she recalled what had happened approximately a half hour ago. She couldn't help but crack a grin as the words that he had spoken floated to her mind, creating memories she knew that she would never forget.

"I can't believe he said yes!" she screamed out, though no one _seemed_ to be there.

Of course, that didn't mean that someone was there. "I told you so!" cried Rion as her form became visible. She was wearing her usual cheerful grin on her face, though it did seem to be a little more happy than usual, Mion noted. "I told you ther was nothing to worry about, and guess what? There really was nothing to worry about at all!"

"Thank you, Rion! Without you I don't think I ever would have asked him out. Of course, Shion helped me a little with the advice…" Mion spoke.

"Mion," corrected Rion.

"Oh yes, Mion helped me a little bit with the advice," Mion replied. Since she had learned she would never go back to her own world, Rion had insisted on referring to Shion as Mion and Mion as Shion. It worked better that way anyways, since it would help her accept and get used to the change. "She told me a lot of useful things, but you were the one that pushed me in the moment, I think. Well, whatever it may be… yes!" she cried out once again. She could barely control her excitement, and the goddess near her was just a tiny bit afraid that she would soon explode, though that did not make her any less happy for the girl.

Rion sat down next to her, though it didn't do too much good because Rion was unable to really feel anything anyways. "I'm really glad for you. Does this mean that you two are going to be boyfriend and girlfriend now?" she asked.

Mion nodded. "Yeah, he's my boyfriend now and I'm his girlfriend. We're going to spend so much time together now… and it's going to be really wonderful…" She looked away, blushing. She really hated showing this side of herself to anyone or admitting that side of her existed, but in this situation there was no hiding it and no point in hiding it either.

She actually wasn't too sure what would come next, but now that they were boyfriend and girlfriend surely something romantic would happen. Perhaps they would hug again, or maybe even kiss! …Nah, perhaps that was a stretch. Maybe they would just go out to eat or something similar, but that was fine too. She was happy to do whatever now that they were together. She wasn't used to this kind of thing and wasn't too sure what to do on a date, but… she would figure it out. It couldn't be too hard, now could it?

"I'm really happy for you, Shion," Rion told the girl. "No, really, really happy for you!" she correct as she threw her arms up in the air and yelled cheerfully. "I know it's not me who is going out with anyone, but I don't have much to do other than to observe you so it's just as good as if I were the one who had gotten accepted by someone."

Mion smiled. "Oh, thank you so much Rion. I hope that this works out well. I'm looking forward to whatever is in store for the two of us now that we're together."

"I'm looking forward to seeing what happened between the two of you, too!" Rion said with a grin. "I know that you're heavily in love with him—"

Mion flustered and stared at Rion with wide eyes, clearly embarrassed by what the goddess had said. "I'm not _heavily_ in love with him!" she protested, "I mean I… It's just that I…" She really couldn't deny it now, but having someone say such a thing was still a little embarrassing. Someone else saying something like that did tend to make her a little bit flustered, which was why Shion found so much joy in teasing her whenever possible.

Rion just giggled. "There's no need to hide it, I'm just a goddess who follows you around, right? It's not like I'm going to tease you or tell anyone. You're the only person I could ever talk to anyways."

"You're not just a goddess that follows me around, Rion. You've really helped me over the time that I've been in this world. You've taught me a lot of things, actually. If it weren't for you I wouldn't have gone for Kei-chan and if it weren't for you I probably wouldn't have accepted this world!" Mion reminded the goddess as she turned to look right into her dark yellow eyes. "So you shouldn't say things like that."  
>Rion smiled. "Thank you, that means a lot to me. A lot of the time I feel like that because the only thing I can do now is talk to you and project a few images like the ones I have showed you of this world and the previous one. Well, I was also able to bring you to this world, but that's just about it. So sometimes I just feel a little… well…" She grinned wryly. "Unnoticed…?"<p>

"You're not unnoticed anymore now that I'm here. It's not like I'm going to stop talking to you or anything to that effect." She shot her another reassuring grin. "So don't worry about anything like that or say things like that. It'll make you feel bad."

"Well, I guess so!" said Rion confidently. "Thank you for allowing me to follow and talk to you, by the way, and for the advice that you just gave me. As you can tell, I'm really just a powerless god now and it's not something I'm very secure about. So hearing words like those makes me feel a little better." Rion stopped to let out a smile, one that was small yet powerful. "So really, thank you a lot for that."

Mion grinned back. "Your welcome, and you're not a powerless god if you can bring me to a universe like this and save me from dying." She paused. "Er… well, mostly from dying, but that doesn't matter because as long as my spirit is still alive, it's fine. So don't worry about that either. You don't need to call yourself powerless if it's not true."

Rion still looked a little unsure. "…I really am a powerless god if I couldn't save you or bring you back to your world."

Mion felt guilt strike her for bringing up that topic. She hadn't intended to offend her, really, but she supposed it had come across as that. "No, I'm fine, really," the girl insisted. "You know I'm happy here now. I've figured out that everyone else is a lot happier in this world and even if I'm not Mion, I'm fine with it. As long as my sister is happy, I'm happy. And besides…" she spoke, cracking a huge grin, "I have Kei-chan now."

"Oh yes!" cried Rion, "you do have him now! Does that mean that you're completely happy now?"

"Well, I'd be completely happy if Satoko joined us and went back to her old personality, but with my circumstances I am happy," Mion answered.

Rion's smile grew on her face, washing away whatever worry there was before. Mion was glad to see that, as it made her feel better about having maybe accidently offended her with her words. "That's really good then! I'm glad to hear that things are working out for you in this world, even if the Satoko issue still needs to be fixed. Well, as long as you are! And I see that Satoko is getting a little better. I'm sure everything will be perfect in no time!"

"Yeah, it will!" cried Mion. "Everything is going to be perfect!"

She smiled at that thought. It wouldn't be long until Satoko gained back her old personality, or so Mion assumed. Now that she was with Keiichi, almost everything was perfect. She just needed to get Satoko to normal and maybe bring Shion and Satoshi together, but she was sure that would work itself out on its own. There wasn't much she could do to help the situation aside let them be and allow them to have a few conversations on their own.

Otherwise, things were going as planned.

Her chain of thoughts broke when the door opened, revealing the figure of Shion dressed in a traditional kimono her grandmother insisted she wear whenever she was in training sessions. She let out a sigh as she allowed herself to fall, practically crushing her sister as her body collided against hers, causing a great amount of shock for Mion who had not been expecting that at all.

"Shioooon, training sessions are so boring," complained Shion as she leaned on her sister. "I don't like spending so much time dealing with it… I wish I had more free time."

Mion simply smiled at her sister and reached her hand out to gently pet her head. "Don't worry about it, I'm sure it does you some good. You need to learn how to be the strong head some day and rule Hinamizawa!"

"Yeah, but it's still a little boring. I could be going out to dinner at some restaurant with my friends if it weren't for those sessions," complained Shion. She leaned on her sister's shoulder, burying her head into it. "I'm so tired. I didn't get any sleep anyways, so I could have been using the time to take a nap…"

Mion cracked a smile at her sister. This wasn't unusual. "Man, Onee, do you just not go to sleep or what?"

"Yeah, I was up last night thinking…" Shion answered as she closed her eyes and relaxed against her sister.

"Thinking about what?" Mion asked the girl, blinking at her and allowing her to relax. She didn't really mind what her sister was doing at all. If she needed some support, then she needed some support.

Shion grumbled something into Mion's shoulder, though Mion didn't hear it at all. "…—eah… tired…" she finished it off.

Mion sighed, wrapping her arms around her sister. "Well, you shouldn't be thinking about such things then if they cause you such distraction," she told her, though she still had no idea what her sister had been thinking about. It didn't really matter anyways, she decided. "Really Onee, you need the sleep."

"I know, I know, but it's kind of hard not to think at night since you get so bored," Shion replied.

"Then think about sheep jumping over fences and count how many make it to the other side. You'll fall asleep in no time because it's just so boring!" cried Mion.

"Yeah, but it's too boring to think about that."

"That's why you fall asleep," Mion replied. "That's the whole point of thinking about sheep jumping over fences in the first place."

Shion muttered something that sounded a lot like "I know" and then was quiet. Mion sighed and just allowed her sister to relax on her shoulder, though she wasn't sure if it was even that comfortable for her sister to be resting against her in the first place when she could be sleeping on the futon.

She eventually did pull away, blinking tired eyes at her sister. "But there's no point in falling asleep now, I suppose. Then I won't be able to fall asleep later tonight," she responded. "…As tired as I am…"

"That's the way it works. If you fall asleep now you won't be able to later, so hang in there for me, okay?" She shot her a reassuring grin. "You can do it!"

"Yeah, I can do it," muttered Shion. "It's just that there isn't so much to do, so I'm going to get bored and fall asleep. It's like counting sheep!"

Mion laughed at her sister's remark. "Well, we can just talk about things then," she suggested.

"But I don't think there is anything to talk about. I mean, what do you want to discuss? My meeting and training? It was boring as usual." Shion looked to the wall, sighing. "I guess there was a little progress on the investigation of the murder that happened, but that's about it. Not that talking about an investigation is that interesting, but it's good to know progress and such."

Mion blinked, suddenly very curious about what had happened. She had almost forgotten about the murder. That was another issue. Why would anyone want to kill her great uncle? He really didn't do much aside from criticize Oryou these days. "What did they find out?" She couldn't help but ask. If there was any information then she wanted to know it.

"They found a note buried underneath a pile of papers on his desk. It was written anonymously and said to meet the person who had written the note at the spot that he was killed at around ten PM," Shion explained.

Mion blinked. "And they still don't know who did it? Shouldn't they just be able to look at the handwriting or the fingerprints that were on there?" she asked her sister.

"Yeah, but it was one of those notes that was written from cutouts from a magazine or something, and there were no fingerprints other than Uncle Kurou's," Shion replied. "It seems that whoever did this murder thought about it for a long time and very carefully…"

"Hold on a second!" cried Mion. "Something is really funny about that. When something is written in magazine cut outs, it usually indicates that they don't want people to know whom they are and therefore, a crime. It's used in those mystery novels so they can't figure out who someone is by the handwriting, right?" She had a very confused look on her face as she explained her train of thoughts to her sister. "So why did he go visit there in the first place? Didn't he know that if he visited there, that someone would want to do something bad to him?"

Shion nodded. "Exactly, so the police investigated a little more. You know how Uncle Kurou keeps a gun in his house, just in case? Well that was missing, so they think that Uncle Kurou realized that someone was threatening him in some way and brought a gun with him so he could find out who it was and kill them before anything happened if they were to threaten him with death, but they got him first and threw the gun away somewhere. They couldn't find the gun at all…" Shion sighed and shook her head. "It's very confusing though, since it doesn't really tell us who did it but rather more details on how it happened. I don't think we'll ever figure out the culprit…"

Mion sighed at the thought. If they didn't find the culprit soon, they could go after anyone. If they indeed targeted her great uncle because he was a part of the Sonozaki family, then anyone of them could go next. Mion wasn't too sure, though, seeing as if that were the case they probably wouldn't have gone for Uncle Kurou. ...Well, maybe they would have. She wasn't quite sure.

"…Ah, this is too confusing," Mion replied. "I… I have no idea who could have killed him either."

"Yeah…" Shion sighed. "That's about where the investigation is at. The rest of the meeting was boring. I wish that I could have spent time after school with Satoshi or something." She shrugged. "Anything would be better, I think. I want to take Satoshi out for dinner sometime and get his mind off of things. He's been too worried and concerned lately and it makes me worried and concerned."

Mion frowned at the mention of the boy, and how concerned Shion was for him. Yes, things had been rather harsh on Satoshi lately, and even though the two hadn't talked in a while Mion knew he was under stress. Taking him out to dinner or something to clear his mind did seem like a good idea, though Mion wasn't too sure how she would ask him to do that, or if he would even accept. His aunt and uncle may get mad at him for running off when they need him to do things like chores. She knew how they were in her world, and they shouldn't be any different in this one.

"I hope things get better for him. We've been trying so hard to get Satoko to join in with us," Mion said. "It's got to be a little weight off his shoulders, you know?"

Shion nodded. "I know."

Mion still seemed a little concerned for him, and not just for him either, but for Shion as well. She knew that the subject of Satoshi was a hard one for her since she loved him so much and he didn't feel the same way back. It wasn't only that though, but she cared for him so much so seeing him so stressed out must put a lot of pressure on her and make her feel bad about not being able to do much about her situation. Mion too wanted to help out, but she didn't know how she could get rid of their abusive uncle and aunt. "Onee, are you feeling okay about Satoshi? I mean, I know you love him…"

Shion looked at Mion. "It's not about romance that I'm concerned about, Shion. Satoshi and I are just fine. Our relationship has been getting a lot better and I'm sure we'll be getting together soon, but it's him I'm concerned about," Shion replied. Mion was a little surprised to hear that, as she was sure a lot of pain came from having unrequited feelings, but she supposed not. It was good to hear about their relationship, though. "He's just so… stressed. I hope that with Satoko, he'll get a little better. When we get back on school on Monday, I'm sure things will be better. At least he gets tomorrow off to relax himself a bit… if his uncle and aunt don't boss him around."

"Onee, I'm sorry…" Mion whispered to her.

"Thanks, Shion, but don't be sorry for me, be sorry for Satoshi…" Shion breathed, looking away. "I'm just fine, I just worry about him…"  
>There was silence that followed, and Mion had no idea how to break it. She wanted to say something to her, but there was just nothing to say. She couldn't comfort her; there was no one to comfort anyways. As Shion said, she was just fine. It was Satoshi who wasn't fine right now. She just didn't know how to fix him up other than help Satoko, and that was working out pretty well. Well, perhaps when that got better, so would he…<p>

"So, Shion, how have you and Kei-chan been doing?" Shion asked him, finding a topic to break the silence.

Mion's eyes lit up at the topic, realizing that she hadn't yet told Shion about what had happened. Shion seemed to notice her happiness and became a little confused and curious, judging by her expression. "Oh, everything is great, Onee!" she cried out in pure joy. All the feelings she had had before flooded right back to her, the pleasant memoires warming her heart.

Shion smiled at the sight of her sister so happy. "Shion, you're really happy right now. What, did he ask you out or something?" she asked him.

"Nah, I asked him out," she answered, "and he said yes!"

"That's great, Shion!" cried Shion. She reached for her sister and pulled her into a tight hug. Mion returned the hug, finding comfort in her sister's warm embrace. "I'm really happy for the two of you! And to think that it's just the beginning of the middle of August… you two really developed quickly!" She pulled away from her sister to give her a bigger smile. "Ehe, I knew you two would be perfect for each other."

Mion smiled. "Thank you." She was surprised that her sister was this supportive in a time where she didn't have the one she loved, but she quickly realized that she was just being herself. She shouldn't have assumed that Shion would be unhappy. "Really, thank you for everything. Your support, introducing him to me…"

"You're welcome! I'm just happy to help out my sister!" Shion cried. Then, she cracked a teasing grin, and Mion couldn't help but gulp. "Did you two kiss?" she asked her. "Or did you do something… _more_ than that?" She shot her a perverted grin, which caused Mion to turn a bright red.

"No!" she cried out at once. "We just said we'd go out with each other and then we hugged and stuff! There was no kissing involving and obviously we didn't go that far! T-That's just crazy!"

Shion laughed out how flustered her sister had gotten over the small mention of such a subject. "Oh, you know I'm just kidding Shion. But I don't think it would be unlike you two do be doing that so early." She gave her a knowing wink, and Mion felt her face grow hot in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. "When are you going to go on a date with him?"

"I don't know, we haven't planned anything," Mion replied, trying to wipe out the thought of what Shion had mentioned before that.

"Okay, just let me know when!" Shion cried out. "I'll be there for you to help you find the right clothing and such, and I'll make sure that you two go on a perfect date and that sort of thing!" She shot her sister two thumbs up. "You can count on me for that. But…" she gave her another perverted smile. "Just don't go too far with him, okay? I don't want you to get pregnant or anythi—"

Shion was cut off when Mion playfully hit her over the head in a fit of embarrassment combined with anger. "Stupid Onee!" cried Mion, "don't say things like that!"

Shion just laughed. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry! I'm done teasing!"

Mion crossed her arms under her chest, still embarrassed. She looked away from her sister, grumbling. "Okay, fine, but you have to really mean you're done…" Shion's teasing went a little too far sometimes, and this had to be one of those times.

Shion laughed again. "Yeah, I mean it. Just have fun with Kei-chan for now? Just not _too_ much fun—"

"Stupid Onee! You lied!" cried Mion as she sent a fist down on her sister's head, causing her to yelp out with the sudden pain. She grabbed her pillow in a rage and began hitting her sister over and over again with it, a little more playfully than violently. She didn't actually want to hurt her sister, after all.

"Okay, really now! I'll stop! Just stop—ouch—hitting me with the pillow!" cried Shion as the soft feathers were sent up in a flurry around her.

Mion put the pillow down, allowing her sister to sit up. She once again looked away from her, mumbling under her breath about how she probably was going to start teasing her again in a moment. However, when she wasn't looking, Shion grabbed her own pillow and hit it against her sister, causing her to cry out in shock and fall over.

"Hey, what was that for, Onee?" cried Mion.

"No reason, just payback is all!" cried Shion as she cracked a smile on her face.

"Well then, two can play that game!" Mion reached for her own pillow and hit her sister with it. Shion yelped and then responded by hitting her right back in the side, which made Mion hit the pillow over her sister's head.

"Pillow fight!" Shion cried out as the two of them continued to hit each other. White feathers flew about the room and scattered onto the ground, nearly creating a blanket of feathers around the room.

As the two of them fought, Mion couldn't help but smile at the mess they were making. Sure, Shion could tease at times, and she could be supportive at other times, but there was one thing that never changed. Shion was still the best sister Mion could ever ask for.

_~~~~X~~~~_

It was only a little while afterwards that Mion was asked to go into town to pick up some food for dinner, and she had been asked to do so very quickly so that no one had to wait very long to eat. So as soon as she had been asked, she ran out the door and to Okinomiya in a flash, then buying the food as soon as she could. She had gotten everything she had needed, and the time to go back had come. She had to hurry still, as people were waiting on her.

She looked at her bags. It would be hard to run back, since there was so much stuff. Though Mion knew she had to hurry. She too was very hungry at this point, and she knew how Shion could be when she was hungry. She gulped. Well, a lot of other people got even more cranky when too hungry…

However, as she was leaving, something, or rather _someone_ caught her eye.

"Satoshi-kun?" Mion said with clear surprise in her voice as she spotted the blonde-haired boy struggling to carry some of the bags in his hands. "What are you doing here?"

Satoshi looked surprised to see her as well. "Ah, Shion! Hello," he greeted, though he could not wave to her for his hands were full of bags.

Mion walked over to the boy. She had to go soon, but why not chat with him for a little while. "Hey, Satoshi-kun. Why are you here?" she asked again.

"Well, my aunt and uncle demanded that I pick up some things, and Satoko wouldn't go, so…" He put his bags down on the ground, letting out a sigh of relief as he allowed his arms to relax for a little bit. "I didn't really have a choice in the mater. I think I've told you a little about how my aunt can get at times…"

Mion frowned. They had just been talking about this earlier, hadn't they? Poor Satoshi… She only had an idea of how hard it could be to live in a place where no one cared for him. Well, perhaps Satoko did deep down inside, but she certainly didn't let those feelings show. She had had rough times in the past when she was living with a family that hated her for being a twin that should have died, but they certainly weren't abusive in the same way Satoko and Satoshi's aunt were.

"Sorry…" Mion could only whisper.

Satoshi seemed a little surprised. "Ah, you don't have to be sorry. I'm used to doing things like this, so it's not anything anymore." He shot her a smile, though Mion knew that there was pain in that smile hidden deep down inside.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Mion asked the boy.

"You've done enough to help me," Satoshi told her gently. "You and the rest of the club have been helping me a lot with Satoko, and she's been getting better. She's really excited for the game you said that you would play… she really wants to show off her skills. Excuse her for being arrogant, by the way, that's just the way she is." He sighed and shook his head. "Still, you got her to interact with us, and it's kind of amazing. So that's enough. Just keep doing what magic you're doing, okay? You and the rest of the club."

Mion felt bad, but she nodded.

Satoshi reached out and pet the girl's head gently, smiling at her gently. "Thank you for everything, Mion. Everything you have done has meant a lot to me, and I can't tell you how much I'm grateful for it. I could stand here all day and talk about how thankful I am… but I have to run or my aunt and uncle will be mad."

Mion just nodded her head, realizing that she too had to be going soon. She wasn't satisfied with just doing what she was doing, but really, right now all she could do in this moment was chat with him for a brief moment.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"I should be the one thanking you..." He looked over at his watch, letting out a sigh. "I have to run now, but thanks again for everything. Well then…"

With that, the boy was gone. Even though Mion knew she had to go too, she found herself watching as he disappeared into the nearing darkness of the night. He really was suffering, wasn't he? At least she was doing what she could do about the situation. Helping him with Satoko was pretty good… that certainly made him feel better. She knew how much of a stressful topic Satoko had been before, and he now felt a lot better about it.

But was there really nothing else that she could do?

She sighed. There was no use dwelling on it for now, she could think about it when she got some free time. For now, she really had to be going back home. Everyone was probably getting frustrated over his or her empty stomach.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**At least this took less time than I thought it would. I still have to revise, though. I have a lot of things I wanted to do tonight, but… half of those were canceled out because of my stupid headphones ;3;. Oh and, note to self and everyone reading this: Don't start out an author's note at the beginning of a chapter with a quote. You'll hear everything you write in that character's voice. It was kind of… odd, to say the least, considering the character in question. At least it stopped when Shion started talking about Satoshi.**

**Okay, now I have to run and upload this chapter and then go over it. There isn't much else to say here. My Spanish class has gone off to Puerto Rico already. I wonder how they're doing? (I'm glad I'm not there…)**

**~Crimso**

**EDIT: Are you guys getting emails from FF? I'm not getting any. They didn't email alert me when I uploaded this chapter, didn't email me when I got messaged... My account alerts seem fine. Is it just an FF thing right now or is it just me?**


	22. Chapter 21: Date

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**My mom and little sister are going to be going away tomorrow for the weekend, which is actually pretty nice because… well, my little sister is basically **_**the**_** annoying little sister type. I guess she's okay at times… but… not really others. Plus I get to spend more time with my older sister and dad and stuff. That's always nice.**

**I feel guilty for not updating since Sunday. Really, I'm sorry guys! (Why does spell check suggest I should change that to "I'm a sorry guy")? By the way, my computer is fixed. My headphones aren't. I'm using one that's half broken now and I hate headphones that are half-broken! At least it's something?**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-One: Date_

While Sunday mornings could sometimes be deemed boring because of the lack of things to do and the small amount of people around, Mion for some reason found this one particularly relaxing. She had been tired recently, so just lying there on her futon was fun enough for her. Besides, Shion would be out of her meeting soon enough so that the two of them could talk about various things. It didn't matter if they ended up talking about nothing at all; it was still just fun having her to talk to.

However, Sunday mornings had changed quite a bit since she had come to this world. There was the obvious change of not having to go to meetings, but…

"Hey, Rion?" Mion called.

The goddess suddenly appeared next to her, fading in as she gazed at the girl. "Yes?" she spoke out in her usual child-like voice.

"Do you ever get bored of just having to follow me around all day?" Mion asked the goddess as she looked to her side and at nothing in particular.

Rion shook her head. "No, it's a lot more fun than what I usually do, and I like talking to you," she explained. "So it's not boring to follow you around. Seeing you play with your friends is a lot of fun."

"Ah," Mion said. Since she had come here, Rion had been the one she talked to whenever she got bored. She was a sweet girl, even though she was probably a hundred times her age. Well, maybe not a hundred, but a number that was close to that. Still, the goddess certainly didn't act her age and talking to her was very fun. "What did you do before I came here and asked for your help?"

"I just kind of wandered about these worlds watching people. I couldn't interact with them or anything," Rion answered. "When I noticed that you had died in the other world, I pulled you over into this one. I wasn't planning on interacting with you because I thought that I would be a disturbance." She looked down at her feet, which began shuffling as a nervous expression plastered over her face. "But when you asked for my help, I decided that maybe you would need it."

Mion couldn't help but smile a little sadly at the goddess's words. It seemed just like her to hide from Mion, thinking that she would be a disturbance to her. Really, she was so shy and worried even though she was a goddess.

"You didn't have to hide, I would have talked to you no matter what. I was practically banging my head on the wall trying to figure out what had happened!" Mion joked as she rolled her head over so that she was looking at the ceiling, her arms folding themselves behind her green hair.

A look of guilt shot across Rion's face. "I'm sorry!" she cried out. "I should have helped you and not waited for you to ask! I really am a worthless god!"

Mion couldn't help but let out a large laugh, something that startled the goddess greatly. "Aha, no you're not! We've been over this a thousand times, Rion! It doesn't matter that you came a little late. What matters is that you did."  
>Rion's worried expression relaxed, and she nodded her head. "Okay, you scared me there for a little bit."<p>

Mion laughed a little more and then resumed to being quiet. She looked at the ceiling for a little bit, a smile on her face even though she wasn't thinking about anything in particular, and if she was, it wasn't really anything that would cause her to smile or even to frown. "Hey, Rion?" Mion suddenly spoke out again. "Why can you only talk to me and not anyone else?"

"I don't really know," Rion admitted, "but it has to do with the fact that you're a Sonozaki. As I said before, I am the ancestor of the Sonozaki family. I don't know why you and not any of the other Sonozakis, though. I couldn't communicate with your grandmother, mother, or sister even if I were to try!"

That was indeed puzzling. Mion wondered what about her made her special and different from the other Sonozakis, and why she was granted the power to talk to Oyashiro-sama. Well, one of them, at least. Still, there wasn't anything particularly special about her, now was there?

"So why weren't you with me in the other world?" Mion asked the goddess. "Is it also because you were afraid to talk to me until you asked?"

Rion shook her head. "Again, it's something I really don't know the details of, but…" She sighed, a puzzled look on her face. "I can't go to your world. I'm stuck in this world as well as a few others. I don't know why, but whenever I try to cross over to the other worlds, I get refused. There is something pushing me away from the world that you come from and worlds similar to yours." She paused for a moment, shaking her head again. "The only worlds I can access are the worlds that are dramatically different from your world. In other words, worlds like these where you are a different person, Satoko's personality is different, Rena isn't here, Satoshi is, Rika's different… This is not the only world like this one. There are worlds I can access where no one has sinned, worlds where everyone acts different, worlds where Hinamizawa has already been destroyed in the dam war…"

"And you don't know why you can't access worlds that are like mine?" Mion asked, sitting up.

Rion nodded. "I have no idea. If I had been able to access one of those worlds, I would have taken you into one of those instead of this one. You see… the world that you come from is the 'real Hinamizawa.' Meaning, well… it's the real world. This is a spinoff of that world, a parallel universe. How it came to be the 'real Hinamizawa' is something I don't know either. But I do know that while for now, this is a spinoff world, it can become the 'real Hinamizawa.'"

Mion blinked at Rion. "Huh, what do you mean? How?" she asked the goddess.

"It's very simple. This world becomes the 'real Hinamizawa' when you are satisfied with it. When you decide that this world is perfect, then it becomes the 'real Hinamizawa.' It really doesn't change anything at all. In fact, the whole 'real Hinamizawa' and 'spinoff Hinamizawa' thing really isn't for anything other than title and knowledge on which one all these worlds originated from," Rion explained.

The whole thing was really confusing. What was the point of the real Hinamizawa and changing this one into a real one if nothing happened? "So, wait a minute, why me? Why when I'm satisfied?"

"That is because you are spiritually connected to me, the goddess that is in this world right now. You have the power to change it, but I don't." Rion smiled at the girl. "But there isn't much point to changing it. You can't really control it, either. When you're satisfied, it will just happen. There aren't really any real effects to it anyways, either." She paused for a moment. "Actually, never mind what I said before about me not knowing how the world became the real world. I think I know… the person who the other Oyashiro is connected to has deemed that world to be the perfect world. That's why it's the real Hinamizawa."

It was still really confusing, even though now she had an explanation. Not that it really mattered, she supposed. If it wouldn't make a difference, then it didn't matter. She could just lay back and relax and not worry about the whole thing. It was still good to know about these things, though. Learning about how alternate universes worked was actually kind of cool.

"You were in that world too, so it wouldn't have made a difference if you thought it was the perfect world. But now that it's separated, well… the real Hinamizawa can be changed at any time." She smiled. "Well, I suppose this is all just a 'for your information.' It doesn't really matter at all!" Her smile grew more cheerful as she stepped towards Mion, bending down so that her face was in front of the girl's. "For now, I think you shouldn't worry about a thing and just relax and enjoy this world!"

"Yeah, I agree with you! This whole talk about the real Hinamizawa and the spinoff ones really doesn't make a difference to me." She sat up on her futon, grinning wildly. "All that I care about right now is that Satoko joins our group and becomes similar to the old Satoko. Then, everything will be fine and I can go on living in this world like normal and not having to worry about changing anything around!"

"Yeah!" cheered Rion, raising a fist in the air. "I'm cheering for you, Sonozaki Shion! Let's change the world and make it a better place!"

Mion grinned at the goddess. "Yeah, that's the spirit! I'll have everything ready in no time, just you watch me make everything better!"

Rion was about to respond to that, but the sudden sound of a ringing telephone coming from the hall cut her off. "I'll let you go answer it," Rion said quickly before she faded away, leaving the green-haired girl to go answer the interrupting telephone.

Mion watched as the goddess faded away and nodded. She stood up form her futon and walked out the door and down the hallway, to where the telephone was. She wasn't sure what the person who called wanted right now, as it couldn't be someone wanting the Sonozaki head to make arrangements to plan out something or anything similar. They were all in a meeting right now, so all the people who would be calling for that reason were probably in the meeting. Nevertheless, Mion picked up the telephone and answered it.

"Sonozaki House, this is Sonozaki Shion speaking," she said into the telephone.

"Ah, Shion!" cried a familiar voice from the other end. "I'm glad I didn't have to go and ask someone to get you or anything."

"Ah, Kei-chan?" Mion said, unable to hide her surprise. "What are you calling here for?"

There was hesitation coming from the other line, and Mion got a little puzzled. "Well… I mean, there's nothing for me to do today! I'm completely bored over here! What about you, are you doing anything right now?"

"Huh? Oh, no, I'm not doing anything right now. I'm actually quite bored myself. Onee is in a meeting right now, so there isn't very much to do," she answered.

"Okay. Well then, I was wondering if you wanted to… uh… wanted to uh… you know, just… hang out at my place or something? Or in Okinomiya?" he said. There was clear nervousness in his tone, and there was a slight stutter. "You know, something like that. 'Cuz we're so bored and stuff."

Mion felt her heart race. Was Keiichi asking her out on a date? "Huh, sounds nice! I think that we should get something to eat in Okinomiya," she suggested, though she wasn't actually particularly hungry right now. She just wanted to go out to eat with Keiichi so that she could call it a date. She had to admit, she was slightly embarrassed, but she really did want to go out on a date with him. It would be fun, wouldn't it?

"Uh, okay, sounds good." There was hesitance from the other end, just like before. "Do you want to go eat at that dessert place or something? You know, the one with the really good chocolate cake."

"You mean Angel Mort?" Mion asked. Angel Mort was a restaurant in Okinomiya known well for its delicious and very pretty desserts. However, it was even better known for the waitress uniforms, which were very skimpy. Shion worked there in the other world, though she didn't here because there was no need for her to do so.

"Uh, yeah, that place," he answered.

"Yeah, that sounds good. I like the desserts there, too." Mion doubted that the boy wanted to go there for the waitress uniforms like everyone else. That just didn't seem like Keiichi, even though he was a pervert at times. "So... meet me at twelve?"

"Okay, that sounds good," Keiichi responded.

"All right, see you then! Bye!" Mion called into the receiver before hanging up. When she did so, she stood there for a little bit, leaning against the wall. A small smile cracked on her face. She would be going on a date with Keiichi. Even if it were just a small one, it would be fun.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion's legs felt like they had piles of lead at the bottom of them, for her feet were practically stomping as she walked slowly and heavily towards her destination. At the time, the thought of a date didn't seem all that embarrassing. But now that she was nearly there, she could feel her face heat up at the very thought of them together, and the things they would do. What would Keiichi think of her if she accidently said something weird during their date? What would he think if she were to accidently do something really silly, like chew with her mouth open without thinking, or if she were to accidently get frosting all over her clothing and create a mess? Would he think badly of her? Would it mess up their relationship?

She could see Angel Mort in the distance now. It wouldn't be far until she met with Keiichi, provided that he had already come and was waiting for her outside already. She wondered what she would say when she saw him, or what he would say when he saw her. "Hello?" "How are you?" "I love you?" …Those seemed odd for some reason.

_Oh come on! Just greet him like you normally do! It's not like lovers run up to each other and passionately kiss the moment they see each other._

Mion looked to her left, and saw that Rion was staring at something. She followed Rion's gaze and saw a woman standing in front of a restaurant, waiting. A man dressed in a fancy suit ran up to her, and the moment their eyes met, they went into a passionate kiss.

Mion stood there, blinking. After a moment, she smacked some sense into her and walked onwards

_Okay, so maybe they do do that. But that's only for adults who have been lovers for a long time! I've never kissed Keiichi or even gotten close to kissing him!_

"I think that you're getting yourself all worked up," Rion said as she walked alongside the girl. "I think the best thing to do in this situation is to be very calm. It'll all work itself out!"

"But what if I mess up?" Mion whispered to the goddess. "What if I do something funny and then he doesn't like me anymore?"

"Nonsense!" cried Rion loudly. Had anyone been able to see her aside from Mion, they would probably be staring at her. "That's not going to happen! If Keiichi really likes you, then he'll know that you just messed up a little. Besides, no one breaks up with his or her boyfriend or girlfriend over something small and silly, I don't think. If they do, then Keiichi isn't one to do that. Besides, he's just as nervous and worried as you are! He's probably thinking the same exact thing!"

Mion looked to Rion, nodding. If she believed in her words and just went along with whatever happened, then perhaps things wouldn't be so bad. She just didn't have to think about being nervous. She just had to pretend that she wasn't going on a date and that she was going to the store or something, and that this was just a friendly meet up or something. That was how she got out of the house, after all.

Mion took a deep breath as she realized she was approaching Angel Mort, deciding that she could do whatever was coming up. She was brave. She stood up in front of a mad woman with a gun, after all! This was nothing compared to that. She took a deep breath as she continued onwards.

However, the moment she saw the brown-haired boy, she nearly froze up on the inside and outside. Her legs halted as if they had turned into stone and her whole body refused to move.

Rion looked at the girl. "Come on, just move your legs. It'll be easy! Just go up and talk to him and then go eat something. That's all you have to do today."

Mion nodded robotically, moving a foot forwards ever so slightly. When that foot was down, she moved her other foot at a pace that a sloth would probably walk at. Rion sighed and shook her head at the girl, quickly gesturing towards Keiichi as if to silently tell her that he was waiting for her to come. She didn't want to keep him waiting, after all.

Wait a moment… would that be something that would ruin their relationship? If she were late… would he get mad at her?

Suddenly, her legs seemed to work at a normal speed again, though they certainly didn't take a normal speed with that realization. She had heard stories about times where people failed to show up for dates and how mad people got, so that was the one thing she wanted to avoid. So what if she spilled something on her clothing or tripped? She just couldn't be late!  
>Keiichi turned around and noticed her, blushing as he did so. He waved to her gently.<p>

Mion scurried over next to his side, and felt relief the moment she did so. She wasn't late! But now… She slowly turned to face the boy, who smiled gently at her with a tomato-red face. Her face turned an equal shade of red in response to that, if not even redder than Keiichi's face. Now she was actually with him. …Would she mess up? What should she say?

"Hi, Shion," Keiichi said, sounding a little nervous. "Shall we go inside?"

Mion nodded her head. "Er… Hi Kei-chan. Yes, we should go inside…" she answered in a somewhat robotic tone, though she instantly told herself to snap out of it or she'd sound really weird. "I mean, yes! We should go inside! I really like this restaurant. They have really good sweets."

Keiichi smiled. "I like the chocolate cake. I went here with my dad once, and he had some weird dessert thing that I tried and didn't like. I don't see how you couldn't get the chocolate cake here." He turned towards the steps and began to walk up them, and Mion nodded and walked up to them with him. She was nervous still, but in her head she told herself she needed to be strong. "Except my dad was a lot more concerned about the waitress uniforms…"

"They're a little bit crazy, aren't they?" Mion responded. "I feel bad for the waitresses. At least they get a lot of money for it." When Shion worked at Angel Mort, Mion was often ordered to switch places with her and do her job at Angel Mort for her. She was always embarrassed whenever she did it and tried very hard to avoid creepy perverts, which there were always a lot of. There was always at least one person who would stare at her breasts the whole time when she tried to take their order, causing a lot of discomfort for her. How Shion and the rest of the waitresses could stand it, Mion didn't know.

"But they seem to be used to it," Keiichi commented as he opened the door and stepped in. "I mean, they aren't too bothered…"

"I don't think that I could ever do it… those outfits would bother me too much, and the perverts…" Mion said with a sigh, recalling the many times she did have to serve here. They were all practically living nightmares.

Now that they were inside, Mion took a look at what was around her. Angel Mort wasn't really anything special design-wise. It was just a bunch of booths really, though everything was painted a light, cute color. The waitresses certainly made the place seem different from an average restaurant, though. The dishes they served aside from the very well made desserts weren't all that great, though no one really minded. As she looked around, she noticed that people who were eating the food didn't seem to care about what they were eating and were pretty much spending all their time staring at the waitresses. Mion sighed and rolled her eyes at them. Some guys these days…

Mion looked over to Keiichi, who wasn't staring at the waitresses but rather at Mion. When their eyes met, he quickly looked at the wall and pretended that he wasn't even looking at her in the first place. She blushed as well, though in her head was relieved that he was looking at her rather than the skimpy waitress uniforms.

"Welcome to Angel Mort!" a waitress said as she stepped up in front of them. "Is it just the two of you here?" she asked.

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah, it's just the two of us," he confirmed.

The waitress looked at the couple and smiled at them. "All right, well we have a seat for two just right this way!" she spoke cheerfully.

As they walked towards the table, Mion gazed over the waitress uniform and sighed, wondering how the waitress could speak so cheerfully and happily when she was wearing something as daring as that. The Angel Mort uniforms were… unique, to say the very least. They were pitch black and were skin tight, with some strange skirt decorations at the bottom that Mion couldn't even begin to describe. The top of the uniform was cut a little low so that the waitress breasts were ever so slightly exposed, drawing the attention of many perverts who came to eat there.

The waitress sat them down at a table positioned against the wall. She set down two menus for them. "I'll be back in a little bit. Take your time!"

When she left, Mion and Keiichi looked at each other, wanting to start up some form of conversation. Mion didn't know what to say, though. She was nervous and found herself fidgeting about in her chair. She hoped that he didn't notice how nervous she was, perhaps he would have a bad reaction to it.

"I know I'm going to get the chocolate cake already," Keiichi said, finally starting up some conversation. "What about you?"

"Um…!" Mion lifted up the menu and looked through it frantically. "Er… I like the chocolate cake too, but I'm not in the mood for something so chocolaty right now. I think that I'll go with the strawberry cake instead!" Mion decided as she placed her menu right down. Though the chocolate cake at Angel Mort was good, Mion often ordered the strawberry cake. Usually, she just wasn't in the mood for so much chocolate.

Keiichi smiled. "Okay!" he cried. "I'd like to… um… have a taste. …If that's okay with you! A-And you can have a taste of my cake." His tone seemed a little nervous now, while he was a little more confident before.

Mion blinked at his sudden display of nervousness. It was making her a little embarrassed, too. "O-Okay. Thanks."

When the waitress came again, they both ordered their cakes. When she was gone, Mion found herself one again wanting to start up a conversation. She didn't know what to say, though. Everything seemed so awkward and nerve racking seeing how the two of them were now together. There would be times where she would go to Angel Mort with him and a few friends, but never did she get nervous when talking to him. Now that they were a couple and that this was some form of romance, it was incredibly embarrassing.

Keiichi was nervously taping his fingers on the table as he looked at the wall, blushing. He was feeling the same way, wasn't he?

Silence continued onwards for a good amount of time, and Mion was beginning to feel a little awkward. She looked at Keiichi, feeling butterflies dance about in her stomach as she twiddled her fingers together. The silence wasn't doing anything to help her nervousness; it was just making her want to die of embarrassment increase ever second more.

"So, when was the last time you came here?" Mion asked him finally. It wasn't really much, but at least it was some kind of conversation and a distraction, and it would certainly prevent her from fainting on the spot. "You said you went here with your dad once, but was that the only time?"

Keiichi nodded. "I've only been here once, and I really liked the chocolate cake. Perhaps I'll try something new if we ever go here again," he said. "But maybe I'll like the strawberry cake if you give me a bite."

"The strawberry cake is good, I think you would like it. The chocolate cake has a little bit too much chocolate for me."

"That's true, there _is_ a lot of chocolate," Keiichi responded, "but I like having a lot of chocolate. I don't know, maybe I'm just into chocolate." He shot a cheesy grin at her, causing the girl to blush. Why did that stupid, silly grin of his cause that reaction in her every time he did it? Maybe stupid, silly grins were just cute, Mion thought, or perhaps because it the smile belonged to…

"Okay, one chocolate cake and one strawberry cake!" the waitress called out. As Mion looked up, she noticed that the waitress was indeed there, standing there with a smile on her face and a platter flat on her hand containing gorgeous cakes. She blinked in surprise, and realized that the amount of time they had spent in silence had to have been more than just several minutes.

The waitress placed the cakes down in front of them, continuing to wear a smile that rivaled the desserts in terms of sweetness. She bowed to them and walked off, leaving the two lovebirds to enjoy their cake.

Mion looked at her own cake as she picked up a fork and poked it. As usual, it was nice and moist, though not enough to be soggy. The frosting was creamy and sweet and wasn't dried up, and the strawberries looked to be of high quality. She moved her head to look at Keiichi's chocolate cake, staring at both him and the cake as he licked his lips at it. The chocolate cake was a rich brown color and was paved with thick, rich chocolate frosting that had been drizzled with chocolate sauce.

Keiichi poked it with his fork, and soon found himself digging right into it, though slowly. As he did so, however, Mion hesitated as she looked down at her cake. How should she eat it? She didn't want to wolf it down and look like some sort of slob in front of her boyfriend, and she didn't want to eat to slowly and make him wait for her to finish eating. She could eat it at a medium pace, but… what if he ate it at a slightly faster pace, or a slightly slower pace? Of course she could look up and check to see how fast he was eating every so often, but then he may notice and start getting a little confused as to why she was staring at him so much, if not rather freaked out by such behavior.

Mion gulped. How Keiichi made something like eating a cake so complicated, she didn't know.

Mion slowly poked it with her fork again and took out a chunk, bringing it to her mouth and chewing slowly. The sweetness of the cake was not too much, and the frosting did not overpower the taste of the vanilla cake. The strawberries added to the flavor, adding just the right about of sweetness though not enough to make the whole dessert too sweet. She swallowed, and then wiped her face with her napkin when she realized some frosting was on her face. She didn't want to get embarrassed about that in front of her boyfriend.

Keiichi looked up at her, smiling. "Yeah, it's as good as always!" he cried. "I just don't want to eat too fast, otherwise it'll all be gone!"

Mion looked up at Keiichi, finding that he had eaten about a fourth of his cake, while she had only taken a single rather small bite. "Oh, yes! I like this strawberry cake too. Here, you should try some." She pushed the strawberry cake in front of Keiichi, offering it to him. Perhaps it would even out the amount of cake they had.

The boy looked down at the cake, licking his lips. "This looks good. I won't take too much…" He reached for it with his fork and cut a small piece out, then bringing it to his mouth and chewing. When he swallowed, a huge smile grew across his face. "Heh, this is really good, too! I don't think it's better than the chocolate cake, but it sure comes close!" He pushed the cake back in front of her, smiling. "Thanks, that was good. Do you want some of my cake?"

Mion's vision floated down to the chocolate cake, and at all the layers of chocolate that had been piled up on top of it. She didn't want to be rude and take his cake… but he was offering it to her, and when she had meals with the club, they always stole food from each other, even without asking!

…Which made Mion wonder… why was she so concerned about the cake in the first place? Didn't Shion tell her before to be who she was so that Keiichi would like her? Keiichi never seemed to mind the way she ate before and never paid attention to it. So why now? Was it because they were together? Well… yes, but she still shouldn't be too concerned about it. If he had noticed before and was freaked out about her eating manors and found them rude, he wouldn't have asked her out in the first place.

"Sure!" cried Mion as she reached for the cake, bring it towards her. She took off a good chunk and chewed on it, swallowing the sweet cake. There was indeed a ton of chocolate, but to her this amount of chocolate seemed just right. It was when she had to eat the whole slice of cake did the chocolate seem to be quite a bit. "Mm… good as usual. I don't think I could take the whole slice, though. There's too much chocolate."

Keiichi grinned. "I don't have a problem with that at all!" he cried. He took the cake back, smiling. "Well, we established that before, didn't we?"

Mion nodded. "I prefer strawberry at times, as I said before. Dunno, guess the chocolate gets to be a bit too much." She reached for her cake and sliced of a large chunk of it. This time, she didn't really think about how she ate it. She never chewed with her mouth open and trusted her body not to suddenly start. Besides, if anything, her body would probably avoid it at all costs.

She continued to eat her cake at a normal pace, this time allowing herself to enjoy the taste and not worry about a thing. Her heart was still pounding at the very thought of being on a date with Keiichi, but she could ignore that a little more now that she had cake to distract herself with. If she didn't think about it, she didn't get nervous.

She eventually finished, and when she did, she leaned back in her chair, sighing. "That was really good. We should come here more often… I really like this place."

Keiichi, who had finished moments before Mion, nodded. "Yeah, I definitely agree with you! I guess my mom will get mad at me for doing that but… heh, who cares?" He grinned at her. "Besides, going here with you made everything a lot better. I could enjoy the cake more, for some reason."

Mion's face turned as red as the strawberries on her cake as her brain processed what he had just said. "Ah… yeah, me too, I guess."

Keiichi blinked at his girlfriend, wondering why she had reacted in such a way, but upon noticing that he had said something embarrassing, he reacted in the same way as Mion had.

"A-Anyways," Mion said. "Let's get the check. I'll pay for mine, you pay for yours…"

"Sounds good."

The waitress came to take a way their plates, and when she returned she gave them the check. The two of them paid as much as their cakes were, just as planned.

The couple then left the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk, watching as the cars rushed by. It was now around one PM, so the sky was still the same shade of blue as it was when she had left her house. Mion looked slowly over to her boyfriend, not sure what to do now. She was sure that she had to get going, but… for some reason, saying goodbye seemed a little awkward.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she looked at him. Now that she had nothing to distract herself with, nervousness began to dance throughout her body, much like it had been before. She gulped it down as it reached her throat in the form of a small lump, trying to ignore the feeling.

_ Geez, Sonozaki Mi—…Sonozaki Shion! Why are you nervous when the date is already over! You're just standing next to him, for goodness sake! _

"T-That was a nice date," Mion said without thinking.

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah…" It occurred to her that Keiichi seemed to be a little embarrassed, too. The tips of his shoes were tapping the pavement repeatedly, and his fingers wiggled about from within his pockets. A pink blush that spread across his head, which was pointed downwards, completed the picture

Mion blinked at him. "Kei-chan?" the girl called to him gently, wondering why he was so nervous, too. Was it for the reason as her? Was she not being silly for getting so embarrassed just for standing next to him?

Keiichi suddenly whipped around, the blush on his face having intensified. "T-Thanks for today, Shion!" he blurted out. "I really appreciate it, and I hope we can do it again sometime!" The boy leaned close to her, gently pressing his lips to her cheek. Warmth spread throughout the spot he had touched, and his lips remained there for just long enough for Mion to gasp gently.

She looked up to face the fidgeting boy, a surprised look on her face. Her mind was in a daze, as the warm feeling on her cheek was still there, tingling about and jumbling up her senses. "Kei-chan—"

A look of alarm suddenly spread across his face, and the color of his blush grew much darker and to the point where Mion became concerned about just how embarrassed he was. "I gotta go!" he blurted out really quickly. "I'll see you tomorrow at school, all right?"

"Huh?" Mion said. "Huh? Oh, okay! I got to go to! I'll see you then, then!" she called out without thinking about what she was doing. That sudden kiss had left her mind in a state of shock, and she found that it was hard to think. Why was it so hard to think? It was just a single kiss on the cheek!  
>Keiichi turned around and went off on his way, his feet slamming against the pavement.<p>

Mion did not move, however. A single hand went up to her cheek, to the spot where the boy had kissed her, her fingers slowly stroking the spot as if doing so would confirm that what had just happened really took place. Her mouth remained slightly open in a gasp, her eyes just a tad bit wide.

In a flash, Rion faded in to her side, a smile on her face. "It looks like you two are moving along great! I told you that you had nothing to worry about!" she cried out cheerfully.

However, Mion's mind was not focusing on what Rion had just said. All her thoughts were currently directed at that spot on her cheek, the spot where warmth still tingled.

"Kei-chan…" she whispered.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Meeeh I was planning on finishing this yesterday, but around 2:40 I got extremely tired and couldn't continue. I could have easily finished it in one day, but… I didn't want to get too tired. I can't think when I'm tired. I mean, I can usually push myself through being tired but it was just this moment where I knew that I had to stop, that I had to close my eyes or I would probably collapse. If I didn't, the rest of my chapter would look somewhat like this: "AKSJAKJSHAKNEUIHIWDNKJ"**

**Eeyup. So Spring break is half over now…. NOOOOOOOOO! Okay, I hope to update a little more now. I think I just needed a week to rest. I've just been spending my spring break sleeping, pretty much. And when I'm not sleeping, I'm staring at my computer screen just doing nothing. Well, not nothing, but… close to nothing. **

**Tomorrow is going to be more eventful, I hope. I'm going to go see the Hunger Games. …I'm going to have run there, huh? I don't want to get a bad seat, like a front row seat where I can't see anything. Everyone is all worked up about that movie… so there's going to be a crowd. Yeaaah. I don't know if I'm going to write tomorrow because I usually don't like to on Saturdays, but certainly on Sunday. This fanfiction is taking longer than I wanted… (In terms of chapters, that is). At least it's about half over?**

**~Crimso**


	23. Chapter 22: Sympathy

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**That awkward moment when you're watching a movie in a theater and a sad scene is happening, and you look around you to realize that everyone in the theater is crying. **_**Everyone. **_**Everyone except you, that is. And then you feel like a jerk for not crying, so you try to force yourself to, and when that doesn't work, you pretend to. I mean, the scene in question has absolutely heartbreaking, but… I just didn't cry. Yeah, probably the most awkward moment I've had in a while. That being said, The Hunger Games was a good movie. I just wish they had given more attention to the side characters and developed them.**

**Mirai Nikki Twenty-Three was awesome by the way. Eeyup. Can't believe it's almost over… I guess I'll have the rest of Fate/Zero to entertain me soon! **

**Note: *hopes I didn't make math errors***

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Two: Sympathy_

Mion's eyes were full of determination as she went over the plan for today. She had promised Satoko that she was going to play a game with her and the rest of the group, and today was the day that they were going to play that game. She sure hoped that it sparked the park of Satoko that loved to play games and turn her mostly to normal, though she would be satisfied just if it seemed like she was going to get better. Perhaps when Satoko recognized that it wasn't good to be arrogant and it was okay to lose then Mion would be satisfied. If it didn't completely bring out her old personality, that was okay. It would come back sooner or later, she imagined.

She glanced to her homework on her desk. She had never finished that review packet, but she still didn't care. Let Chie get mad at her for not doing her homework. She never really cared about academics, anyways.

Then she looked over to Keiichi, who was working hard on his homework. She smiled gently at him, even though she knew that he wasn't looking at her and wouldn't notice her bright smile. That didn't really matter to her, anyway. Their relationship was just fine, despite the rather awkward date that they had. Well, even though it was awkward, it was still fun, right? She even _kissed_ him at the end. Okay, so it was only on the cheek, but that counted too.

Her vision shifted further back in the classroom, where Shion was explaining some homework to a very confused Satoshi. From what Shion had said, their relationship was getting a lot better. Not only that, but from what Mion could see, they were getting along just fine. Shion would always help him when he was in trouble, and Satoshi was very appreciative of it. She was beginning to see them talk a lot more often, and it seemed as if Satoshi would blush at times when looking at her, though Mion couldn't really tell, as she was never close enough to get a good look at his face.

Well, whatever the case was, everything was getting a lot better. Mion was sure that her goals would be reached soon, and then everything would be perfect.

"Near perfect, huh?" Rion commented as she sat on top of Mion's desk, kicking her feet back and forth.

Mion nodded her head, a smile on her face. "Yeah," she whispered gently, "it's near perfect. It's going to be perfect soon. If I can get Satoko to be a little better, then… I think it'll be perfect."

Rion grinned. "And then everything will be so much better. You won't have a thing to worry about, and it makes up for losing your old world…"

"Yes," breathed Mion, "it will be so much better. And I won't be sad about losing my old world anymore… after all, this one will become better than the old one."

Mion changed the focus of her vision to Satoko, who had her eyes narrowed as she stared at her math homework in confusion. A hand floated over her math textbook as she wrote something down with her other. She gently opened the textbook and started flipping through the pages, though Mion was sure that she didn't know what she was doing, for no one could know which page they were on unless they were actually looking at the book.

Satoko looked to the textbook and flipped the pages around until she apparently reached the one she was looking for. She placed her crossed arms on the desk as she rested her chin on them, reading through the page slowly and carefully. She didn't want to miss a single detail, after all.

Mion couldn't help but grin a little. Satoko was so careful in this universe when it came to academics, unlike in her world where Satoko would just get confused easily and beg for help. At least she had the ability to do her work well in this world. Being bad at academics wasn't a good thing, despite the fact that Mion knew that she had that flaw and did noting to fix it anyways.

Yes, everything would go well. Even if Satoko was a little different, it didn't matter. As long as Satoko was mostly Satoko, everything would be fine. Besides, she even had the same hobby as the old Satoko. Even though she wouldn't admit it, she really was the one who placed all those traps everywhere…

There was a yelp from the corner of the room, and the class instantly whipped their heads around to investigate what had just happened. A boy was staring into the bin containing all the pens, trembling slightly.

"What happened?" Chie called out from her desk, lowering the book she was reading so that she could look at the boy.

The boy whipped around, frowning. "I just got the bin out, reached in, and then the pen exploded on me!" complained the boy. Indeed, there were gigantic blotches of midnight-black ink splattered about his bright white shirt, staining it entirely. There was a blotch or two on his face, the ink leaking down slightly in a small river and dripping on the floor.

Chie got up from her seat, quickly stuffing a bookmark in her book before doing so. She wandered over to the boy to examine the bin of pens to find out just what had happened.

However, Mion chuckled ever so slightly under her breath, already knowing what had caused the accident. She turned her head to Satoko, and saw that there was just a hint of a victorious smirk on her face.

Satoko's traps truly were flawless.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Lunch began, and Mion knew it was time for her plan to be brought into action. She smiled a little, wondering if this game would be enough to change Satoko, even if only just a little bit. Besides, even if it didn't, her friends would at least get something out of it. They were all so competitive in the other world… seeing them act the way they used to would make her feel a lot better, and remind her of her own world and how this one wasn't too different if she looked at it closely.

She took out her lunch and began to munch on it a little, waiting. She knew she could just go and get Satoko, but she didn't want to do that. She wanted to see if Satoko would come up to them herself, just like she had done before. It may not mean much, but knowing that the last time wasn't just a one-time thing would be nice.

"So what game are we playing?" Satoshi asked curiously as he opened up his bento box, releasing the fragrance of wonderfully cooked food into the air.

"Is it Go Fish again?" Keiichi asked as he began to swirl his rice around with his chopsticks for no particular reason

Mion shook her head. "Nah, I'm bored of Go Fish, and I'm sure that you're bored of that too. Anyways, I was going to do a board game, but I realized that that may be a little too hard to do with… what, six people? There's Onee, Kei-chan, Satoshi-kun, Rika, Satoko, and me. Yeah, there are too many people to play the game I wanted to, which is a little sad." Mion poked a piece of meat with her chopsticks absentmindedly as she thought about how much she had been wanting to play that game with everyone. Well, she supposed it would have to wait until another day, when there were a few club members absent.

"So what are we playing then, a card game?" Shion asked.

Mion shot her sister mischievous and perhaps just a little bit of a taunting grin. "You'll see when Satoko comes over here, but it won't be something that you would expect."

As if on cue, Satoko dropped her bento box down onto the table, creating a large clatter as it collided with the desk's surface. She reached for a chair to her right and pulled it over, plopping herself down in it. She was wearing a slightly annoyed look, though Mion could tell that she was just wearing that to keep up with her usual "I don't need friends" personality. On the inside, she was excited, judging by the flickering smile that she was trying to wipe off every time it threatened to come back.

"Good, you're here. Now we can get started," Mion said. She pushed her seat back and got out of it, looking down on her friends from her position. "We're going to start in a minute, just let me get what I need."

Satoko narrowed her eyes. "What you need? What do you need? What kind of game do you want to play, anyways. Go Fish is boring if that's what you're suggesting we play."

"I said we're not playing that game ever again, it's too boring," Mion said as she began to wander towards the back of the room, to where all the school materials were kept. "But I chose a game that's not like other games and one that's very simple, but I think that it will be a game you're good at, Satoko, seeing as you like strategy so much."

Satoko crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow, an unfazed expression on her face. "And how do you know I like strategy?" she asked challengingly.

"Because you're so into traps," Mion answered as she gathered materials, holding them against her chest as she collected more. "And don't say that you don't like traps, I know that it's you. Traps involve a lot of strategy… you need to know what you're doing. Nice trick with the pen by the way, I liked that."

Satoko looked enraged. "I did not set up those traps!" she lied.

Mion sighed, shaking her head slowly. There was no point in getting into an argument about it. Let Satoko say what she wanted, Mion knew the truth and it didn't matter that the others didn't. It would become apparent later.

Mion wandered over to her friends and allowed the materials to tumble onto the table, nearly spilling into people's food as they fell. Mion wandered back to the back and gathered a few more things into her arms, then placing them onto the table as well. "Just one more thing," she told them all as she turned back to the shelves.

"Mii, that's a lot of things…" Rika whispered as she looked at all the materials spilled about the table.

"Yeah, it's a lot," responded Satoshi as he began to push the materials to the center of the table and away from the food. It formed a cluttered pile in the center with materials all stuffed together, though no one really cared about the mess.

"I know, this game has a lot of materials but there's nothing to it." Mion grabbed a heavy book off the shelf and pressed it close to her chest, carrying the giant book all the way back to the table. When she got there, she dropped it right onto the table in front of her bento box, causing a huge slam to sound out.

Satoko blinked at the book. "What do you need _this_ for?" she asked rudely.

Mion smirked as she reached for the materials in the middle. She began to pass them out to the club members, giving them one of each thing she had collected. "You'll see in a second. Hold on, just let me give these out to everyone and I'll explain the rules."

When she had done so, she smiled, gazing over all her eager friends with a smile. When was the last time they had gathered for a club game like this? It almost felt like a distant memory to her, but now it was back, and hopefully here to stay if this went over well.

Rion hovered above the table, looking down at all the members. "This is going to be fun…" she said to herself. "I've never seen club activities before."

Mion smiled slightly at the goddess's words, but didn't allow it to stay for very long. "Anyways, the game that we're going to play is something that's really simple and easy. I picked it because it's a good game to play with so many people and a good game to play when it's lunch time, because with cards, I suppose it would be hard to eat when you're so desperately trying to hide your cards from everyone."

Satoshi nodded in agreement. "And I'm the one who always tends to show off his cards by accident anyways…"

"Exactly, so I thought this easy game would be better so then we don't have to go over rules for very long." Mion pointed to the materials each club member had. "This game is simple, as I said before. It's called Sympathy… I'm sure you've heard of it or played it at parties before. The rules go like this: I open the dictionary, find a random category from it, and then when I call out the category, you have to write down the first word that comes to your head on that dry-erase board you have. When we all have our words, we flip it over and show them off. You get as many points as the amount of people who chose the same words as you including yourself, and if you're the only one, then you get none. The one with the most points wins," Mion explained. "Simple enough, right?"

"Wait a second!" cried Satoko, "how in the world does _this_ have to do with strategy and thinking? You just write down a random word and hope people have the same words as you!"

"Not hope, Satoko," Rika told the girl gently, "the point of the game is to think about what the others will chose. I've played this game many times before."

Mion smiled at Rika's helpfulness. "It's just as Rika said. You have to think about what would come to other people's minds. Say… what if the category was ice cream? What comes to your mind?"

"Chocolate, but…" Satoko said.

"Yes, chocolate." Mion turned to Rika, who was wearing her usual cheerful smile. "But Rika, what first comes to mind when you think about the word ice cream?"

"Mii, I think of Green Tea flavor because that's my favorite," Rika said, "but I wouldn't write it down. Chocolate is the way to go, because other people are more likely to think of chocolate."

Mion turned to Satoko, who seemed to have a look of understanding on her face. She nodded to herself, and then turned to the group. "Does everyone else get what you have to do?"

Everyone nodded.

"Good! So that means that we can start the game up!" Mion called out, raising a fist in the air to add to the enthusiasm.

Mion instantly flipped the dictionary open, moving and scanning through pages and pages. Categories were sometimes hard to come by. "Okay, I think I got one. The category for this is farm!"

Everyone went to writing in his or her whiteboard, and Mion thought about the word for a little bit. Well… what was the first thing that people thought about when the word farm came to mind? Of course, it was the picture of a farm. But what stood out the most? Was it the animals, the crops, or…?

No, it was the barn. The first thing anyone thought of when the word farm came to mind was the bright red barn that most farms tended to have. That was her word. She wrote down the word on the whiteboard and then leaned back in her seat, observing everyone. It seemed that Satoshi was still wondering which word he should use, though he didn't look too frustrated. Keiichi, on the other hand, had a look of frustration on his face as he contorted it and scratched his head, clearing thinking hard.

Mion giggled a little. Keiichi was never good at Sympathy. He always thought of the most obscure things, even if the point was to do the opposite.

"Everyone done?" Mion asked. When everyone nodded to confirm, Mion smiled. "Okay, let's turn over our boards!"

Everyone flipped over their boards at once, and Mion scanned through the words that had been chosen. Rika had picked horse, Satoko had picked barn, Satoshi had picked horse, Shion had picked barn, and Keiichi had picked pig.

Mion grinned. "Okay, so that's three points for me, Onee, and Satoko. Rika and Satoshi get two points, and Kei-chan gets none!"

Keiichi gritted his teeth in annoyance. He would have to do better in order to win.

"Okay, so let's get to the next round." Mion looked down at the dictionary and began flipping about, finally pausing at a random page. "Okay, this is an easy one. The word is pet."

Mion instantly thought of cats. She had had a stuffed cat when she was little, after all. She knew that Shion had one two, so that would definitely be the word that would come to her head. Not only that, but Rika's favorite toy was Mr. Cat, so she would also pick pet. That meant she would get three points for sure, and that wasn't counting whoever else might pick the word.

She looked about. It seemed that everyone else had gotten his or her word, and Mion wasn't surprised. The category of pet was an easy one, after all.

"Okay, flip it over and show off what you have!" Mion ordered all of them.

As she called that out, everyone flipped their whiteboards over. Mion went through the words once again, and wasn't surprised by the results. Rika picked cat, Satoko picked cat, Satoshi picked dog, Shion picked cat, and Keiichi picked dog.

"Okay, four points to Satoko, Rika, Onee, and me! Two points for Keiichi and Satoshi!" she called out.

Satoshi looked a little puzzled. "I was sure that you would chose dog, Satoko. Your favorite stuffed animal was a dog…"

"Yeah, but I know Rika likes cats," Satoko said, jerking her thumb towards the slightly older girl. "So that would be the word that she would pick."

Rika smiled. "That's the way you play, Satoko!" she cried out cheerfully. "Go, Satoko!"

Satoko leaned back in her chair, grinning. "Yeah, I knew I would do well in this game. It's easy, after all," she replied.

"That's what I thought," Mion replied. She flipped the dictionary's page around, then stopping once again at a random page. "Okay, so I've got the category of hot here!"

Well, wasn't it obvious? It was August right now, and it was hot. Summer was usually hot, and she was sure that everyone was thinking the same thing.

She waited a little bit for everyone to get their answers, and when everyone seemed to have their, she told them to show their answers again. When everyone showed off their boards, she once again looked at their answers. As Mion had thought, everyone had picked summer.

"Okay, so we all get six points from that," she said. She turned to a notebook and wrote down the current score on the book. Right now, she had thirteen points and was in a three-way tie with Shion and Satoko. Rika was tailing behind them at twelve, and Satoshi with ten. Unsurprisingly, Keiichi was in last. He really didn't do well at Sympathy.

"Next category is flowers," Mion told them all.

This was a little tougher. She didn't know anyone here who was particularly interested in flowers or a certain kind of flower, so her best bet was to go with a well known type of flower. There were many types of flowers she knew… There were roses, lilies, daisies, violets, tulips, … but in the end, she settled for roses. Those were quite popular, weren't they?

Everyone showed their answers. Rika had picked tulips, Satoko had picked tulips, Satoshi had picked rose, Shion had picked lily, and Keiichi had picked rose.

"Darn it!" yelled Shion, "I was sure that everyone liked lilies! Didn't you say that was your favorite kind of flower, Satoshi-kun?"

Satoshi nodded. "It is, but I think that most people think of roses when they think of flowers…"

"I though the same thing," Mion said. "Anyways, three to Satoshi-kun, Kei-chan, and me. Rika and Satoko get two."

Satoko grumbled when she realized that she had fallen behind Mion, who was leading just by one point.

"Okay, so the next category is month," Mion announced to the eager group. This one was relatively easy, as people would probably think of their birth month. In that case, she hoped that Shion would pick February, since they were twins and had the same birthday. Hoping for the best, she wrote down February.

When everyone turned over their answers, Mion smiled slightly. Rika had picked August, Satoko had picked June, Satoshi had picked August, Shion had picked February, and Keiichi had picked August.

She was right about Shion, but she realized she should have figured that everyone else would pick the month that it was right now. It seemed that Shion and Satoko had both thought about their birthdays, though Shion probably thought Mion would assume the same. Satoko… she should have thought about the current month. No one else shared her birth month of June, so it wasn't really a good choice from the start.

"Okay, Onee and I get two points, and Kei-chan, Satoshi-kun, and Rika get three," Mion announced.

Thankfully, Mion was still ahead by a single point. Rika was close behind with seventeen, Satoko with fifteen, Keiichi and Shion also had fifteen, and Satoshi with sixteen.

"Okay, let's do two more rounds. How about fruit?" Mion asked.

There were many possible kinds of fruits, but if she had to choose one, Mion liked apples best. That was one of the most simple fruits, and everyone else would definitely think of it. She began munching on her lunch as she waited for the others, and the others who had thought of their words did as well. Throughout most of the competition, this was how they had been eating. For that reason, their lunch wasn't nearly finished. Usually, they would have eaten more by now.

When it was time to show off the words, Mion smiled again. She was right, most people did pick apple. Rika picked apple, Satoko picked apple, Satoshi picked banana, Shion picked banana, and Keiichi picked orange.

"Three points to Rika, Satoko, and me. Two points to Satoshi and Onee…" Mion eyed Keiichi, wondering why he had picked orange. There seemed to be some rivalry between apples and oranges, but everyone knew that apples came on top of oranges. Poor oranges…

"One last round!" Mion yelled out. She flipped the dictionaries pages about, finally stopping. "Okay, so the category of the last round is color!"

Mion instantly thought of the color green. Perhaps it was because her hair and eyes were green? She supposed that someone would pick the color green, and if she thought of green because her hair and eyes were green, then Shion should too. She knew that she had this game won already; it was already destined to be her the moment they decided to play a game. That was just how good she could be. Sympathy was a game she had played a lot of anyways.

"Okay, now, turn them over and show us your final scores!"

Mion was very surprised with the answers. Rika picked purple, Satoko picked yellow, Satoshi picked blue, Shion picked yellow, and Keiichi red. She wondered why no one had thought of green, seeing as it was such an obvious color. Besides, Shion should have thought of green. This could cost her the game!

"Okay, so that's two to Onee, and Satoko…" Mion told them.

She looked down at her notebook and scribbled down the final scores, gritting her teeth as she did so. Had she lost just because of this one round? She had twenty-one, Satoshi had eighteen, Satoko had twenty, Rika also had twenty, Shion had nineteen, and Keiichi had fifteen.

She grinned wildly. Despite that she completely missed the last round, she still won? It was so close, too! two other people had gotten twenty!

"Okay, so the winner is Sonozaki Shion!" Mion declared out loud. "Coming up in second is a tie between Rika and Satoko! Third goes to Onee, fourth goes to Satoshi-kun, and fifth goes to Kei-chan!"

Keiichi gritted his teeth, burying his head in his hands. Well, it was an expected result…

Satoko looked horrified, on the other hand. "What!" she yelled out. "There has to be an error somewhere! Give me that book!"

Satoko snatched up Mion's book and looked through the scores. They were indeed right, the math had been done right (rare for Mion, but then again, it was just addition) and she had gotten the right number of points for each round. Satoko had indeed tied for second place with Rika, right behind Mion.

"But I can't lose! I bet you just cheated and looked at Maebara-san's answers," Satoko said, leaning back in her chair with an expression that was supposed to show seriousness, but no one could ignore that she was indeed nervous and a little scared. Her facial expression was making her loss way too obvious.

Mion looked over to Keiichi and shook her head. "Kei-chan and I didn't always get the same answer. In fact, I don't think we often got the same answer. So no, I didn't cheat. I just thought hard about each answer, and while I made a few mistakes, I still came out on top because I really tried hard."

"I tried hard too!" snapped Satoko, "so it's not like you're better than me at this game or anything!"

"Of course not!" Mion cried out, "I think that this is just one game, and you could be better than me and we could be equal. But you know, with some games, you just have to accept defeat. I mean, I usually win at this kind of stuff, but there are many games I've lost," she explained to the outraged girl. "Winning isn't everything. Satoko, did you have a fun time?"

Satoko looked away, annoyed, shutting her eyes tightly as she did so. "I did not! I only care about winning and it's impossible that I didn't!"

Mion sighed and looked over at the rest of the group, silently asking for a little help.

"Satoko," Rika told her gently, "you lost this once. Does that mean that with one loss, you've lost everything?"

Satoko nodded stubbornly, not bothering to open her eyes.

"The what about the contest we had where you lost? You lost because you overcooked the food a little, but that's about it," she reminded the girl. "When you did it again, it was flawless. I know I said we tied in cooking, but if I had been cooking at the same time as you for a contest… well, I could have easily messed up and you could have easily won with that dish! Do you understand?"

Satoko peaked an eye open so that she could look at Rika, but remained in her position, and her expression still showed annoyance.

"Satoko, what Rika is trying to say is that it's fine to lose sometimes, and that you could be better at sympathy than Shion," Satoshi told his sister in his usual soft and gentle voice. "It's just that… Shion won this one. But that doesn't mean she'll win them all, and it doesn't mean that she's the best at Sympathy. Think about it, Rika could have easily won as well!"

"But if you're the best at something, you always win! That's why you're the best, after all!" Satoko protested as she whipped around and slammed her fists down on the table.

"Even the best lose sometimes," Keiichi told her. "I mean, Shion has lost at many games before, haven't you?" he asked, nudging his girlfriend in the stomach.

Mion nodded, grinning. "I've lost so many times. Onee and I used to play games at home when we were younger, and I was good and I decided I was the best at games, but you know what? I may have won more than Onee, but Onee beat me so many times! And I accepted defeat each time. It was just a few times that I didn't do as well as usual. You know?"

"Yeah, exactly what Shion said!" Shion yelled out. "I'm better at some things than Shion, but sometimes Shion is better than me, but not all the time. Nothing is perfect, Satoko. That includes people who are good at games."

Satoko looked down at her table and at her fingers. She looked a little worried and concerned.

"But I'm the best at everything…" Satoko whispered, "no one can beat me at anything, ever!"

"No one is the best at everything," Satoshi said. He got up from his seat and moved towards his little sister, placing one hand on his shoulder to comfort her. "You know how it is now, don't you?"

Satoko looked down at her desk. It was clear that she was having a hard time accepting what everyone else was thinking. Seeing as she had the idea that she could beat anyone no matter what the case was in her head, and had believed it for so long, it was clearly hard for her to accept that things were different from how she thought they were and from how she wanted them to be. Mion knew it was going to be tough for the girl, but she had to accept it. At one point or another, someone would beat even an expert at what they were best at, and certainly beat them at _something_, be it a game they know well or a game they don't.

"All right, class!" yelled Chie, interrupting the conversation, "it's time to begin class again, so put everything away!"

"Think about it for a little bit," Shion said with a smile as she began to put away her lunch. "And tell us what you think tomorrow."

Satoko nodded slowly and left the table, leaving behind the group to pack up their lunches and to put everything away.

Mion watched her go, smiling ever so slightly. She had learned an important lesion, even if she hadn't accepted it yet. Shion was right, they should give her some time. That would be enough for her to process the change in reality for her, so that she could accept that she couldn't be the best at everything like she claimed she was. And when she did, she was sure that everything would be so much better.

Mion smiled. She was so close… soon enough, things would be better.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**I'm sure if you read GED, you remember Sympathy. It's a game they played during the Watanagashi-hen Visual Novel and is indeed a real game. I think I've played something like it before, just not under the same name. That was what they called it in the visual novel, anyways. So I picked Sympathy because 1. I knew it existed during Higurashi times because they played it in canon 2. Board games with so many people are so hard to write. Like, imagine writing a whole game of… say, Monopoly, with six people playing. It's such a long game…**

**Anyways, I want to take the time to thank you all for reviewing so much in the past few days! I'm overjoyed! I love you all so much! And for all of you who are wondering when we're getting to the dark half of the fanfiction, I have the answer. If things go according to plan, the chapter after next. It won't be full-blown dark at first, but I'm sure you'll sense things changing.**

**I can't wait to write it.**

**~Crimso**


	24. Chapter 23: Bright World

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**My dreams have become more vivid and odder as of recently. And by recently, I mean as of two days ago. The last dream I had and the dream before that were odd and I remember pretty much everything that happened. I… I don't know what to think. I hope this becomes a thing, because my dreams are interesting. Well, to me, anyways.**

**Note: Last chapter before the darker part of this fanfic. Enjoy it while you can~ *evil cackle***

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Three: Bright World_

The sky seemed to be brighter than usual for some reason, much to Mion's confusion. Perhaps it was because there was not even a single cloud in the sky to obscure the sun's golden rays, or perhaps it was just her believing that things were getting brighter as her whole word was getting closer to perfection. She wouldn't be surprised if everything came together a few days from now, or perhaps even a day or two. Of course, both could be true, and Mion decided to go with that explanation. After all, it seemed that other people were experiencing the effects of having such a bright, sunny day.

"I like the weather, but… Does it have to be so hot?" complained Keiichi as he leaned forwards and collapsed on his desk, sweat pouring from his forehead. "I mean… the middle of August usually isn't this hot!"

Mion waved her math homework in front of her, creating a cool breeze. It was good that she had finally found a use for her math homework, she decided. "Yeah, it is pretty hot. But then again, it's better than pouring rain."

"I don't know, I think at this time, I'd appreciate having a storm cloud hanging right over my head. Then again, if I had a storm cloud hanging over my head, I think I would want it to be as hot as it is now…" muttered Keiichi.

Mion grinned. "I guess you just can't be satisfied with the weather," she remarked, her hair blowing slightly from the breeze she was creating.

Keiichi picked his body back up and leaned in his seat, his shoulders practically slumped over the back of his chair. "Man, I wish it were September already. That's a good month."

"I prefer spring myself," Mion commented, "but September is pretty cool, too!"

Keiichi looked over to his girlfriend, his body position remaining the same. "Hey, Shion?" he called to her. "You seem to be happier than usual recently. You're usually a happy person, but…" He paused for a moment, his face scrunching up as he thought. "Er… I suppose you could say that you're a little more cheery than usual. Even if you are usually cheery. If that makes sense."  
>"Yeah, it makes sense," Mion responded. "Silly Kei-chan."<p>

He grinned nervously. "Ahaha. Anyways, I was wondering why it was… Just curiously."

Mion placed her hand to her chin and stroked it gently. There were many reasons why she was more cheery than usual. This world was getting a lot better, and now she was used to it. The idea of her own world now seemed distant, like a thing of the past. Her mind was now focused on the current world and getting it to perfection, and everything that was going right in this world. Satoko was a lot better now, Satoshi and Shion were getting along nicely and she was sure that Shion would ask him out soon, or perhaps the other way around. "Ah, well I suppose with Satoko joining in on our group mostly, things have gotten a lot better. I mean, Satoshi is a lot more happy now, even if he is still under pressure from his aunt and uncle. Onee has been getting along fine recently too, and when she's happy, then I'm happy."

Keiichi grinned. "I guess you two really are close sisters," he commented.

"Yeah." An idea sparked in Mion's mind, and while a heated blush grew on her face at the thought of it, she knew that it was the perfect opportunity to tease her boyfriend, something that she couldn't miss out on. She loved teasing Keiichi. It was when people teased her that she got embarrassed. "Heh, but you know what I'm the most happy about right now, Kei-chan?"

Keiichi blinked. "What?"

She scooted her chair over next to him, creating large screeching sounds as the metal of the chair rubbed against the floor. She leaned in close to him, cupping one of his ears with her hand and then placing her mouth very close to the ear. "It's because I'm dating the boy I love now," she admitted.

He jumped and turned to look at her, a blush scorching his face. "Wh-Wha! Oh, I'm happy about that too!" he said quickly, clearly having been taken aback by such a romantic statement. "I love you more than anything too, so…"

It was Mion's turn to blush now, and the embarrassment she hid from saying such a daring thing before now became apparent along with the embarrassment of having heard a statement like that come out of Keiichi's mouth. "Ah… thanks. I feel the same way about you, you know…"

Keiichi looked red in the face, though a hand placed on one of his cheeks partially obscured his blush. Perhaps he hadn't meant to let his feelings for her slip out like that before. Mion could understand why he would be so embarrassed, then. If she had said something like that in front of him, showing the extent of her feelings for him, then she would be embarrassed, too. Especially since he had said that loudly, rather than in a whisper.

He was now shifting his eyes from one place to another, trying to determine if anyone had heard his declaration of love to Mion. It didn't seem like anyone did, though, much to his relief.

"Come to think of it," Mion spoke out, "I don't think we've told anyone but Onee about our relationship."

He blinked. "I haven't told anyone. You told Mion?"

Mion nodded. "I did, but she's the one person I told that to. No one else knows…" She looked about the classroom again, just to make sure. Everyone did see awfully distracted by their homework, so she wouldn't be surprised if the comment had gone unheard by anyone aside from the two of them. "But Kei-chan, I think that we should tell them today at lunch. People need to know, and it's not like we can go on having a secret relationship…"

"I think that's a good idea," Keiichi replied. "I mean, they're going to find out sooner or later."

"So when everyone comes at lunch, let's tell them all. The both of us. Together," Mion told him. She had added that last part in out of sheer fright of the idea of being humiliated. She wasn't sure why she would be humiliated or what would cause her to be from just admitting that, but… the idea of having Keiichi admit it along side of her comforted her a little.

What would the others thing of their relationship? Satoshi probably would be happy for them, and Rika too. So why was she worried in the first place?

_I guess I'm just being typical me…_ thought Mion, having accepted the fact that she turned into a melted blob of goo when it came from something like the heat of romance.

"Yeah," he said, "together."

Mion once again became a little worried that someone had overheard them, and began whipping her eyes about the classroom. Thankfully no one had heard them, but in the process of looking around, her eyes rested on Satoshi and Shion. They were both talking rather loudly, as Chie had left the room and there was no way that anyone could stop them from doing so.

"You're so silly, Satoshi-kun! I can't believe you forgot this already!" Shion cried out in her happy tone. "I guess I'll have to teach it to you again, right?"

Satoshi nodded, looking down regretfully at his desk. "I'm sorry for causing you so much trouble, Mion. I know that you go through a lot to teach me these things, but I just can't implant them in my head…"

"Hey," Shion said, noticing that he seemed a little down. "Do I look like I mind teaching you this stuff? I don't mind at all! I'm happy to teach you whatever you need." She reached for his chin and pulled it up away from the desk and at her smiling face. "So cheer up a little."

Satoshi smiled at Shion, and at that moment, Mion spotted the faintest of blushes on his face. "Thank you so much, Mion…"

"Mion and Satoshi get along really well, don't they?" Keiichi commented as he too watched them. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were secretly dating…"

Mion could only nod her head. "Mhm…"

Shion and Satoshi really were getting along well, weren't they? It wouldn't be long before a confession came out of one of them.

The conversation died after that, with the two of them returning to their work when they noticed that Chie had come back from doing whatever she was doing outside of class. Mion's gaze lay on her math homework, and she sighed. Really, it was so much more useful as a fan…

_~~~~X~~~~_

Lunch rolled around soon enough, much to Mion's delight. She had done nothing productive all that class period and remained there, staring at her math homework the whole time. Chie didn't seem to notice, luckily. As Mion clashed her desk together with the rest of her friends, she felt a tickling sensation dance about in her stomach. She had to tell her friends the truth about her and Keiichi's relationship now, and she felt nervous about admitting such a thing in front of them, even though she knew that none of them would react badly to it. Really, _was_ there a reason to react badly to it in the first place?

The group sat at their combined desks, silently munching on her lunch for the time being. Keiichi and Mion were eyeing each other, silently telling each other that they had to go ahead and get truth out of their mouths for the rest of them to hear, but neither of them could speak. Besides, the lunch that Mion was eating right now was too good to stop eating for even a second…

"That's just an excuse, Shion," sighed Rion.

_Shh, it's making sense in my head. Don't ruin it for me…_ she thought to herself as she chewed on her meat, knowing fully well that the goddess couldn't hear her.

"Guys, I have—" Keiichi began to speak.

There was the slam of something hitting the table, and as Mion turned around, she was not surprised to see that it was indeed the sound of Satoko's bento box smashing against the table as she plopped it down. She was staring at the group with a serious look in her eye, gazing from one friend to the next.

"I thought about what you told me yesterday," she informed them all.

Rika smiled at the slightly younger girl. "Mii, what did you come up with?" asked the blue-haired girl. "Did you realize that we were right?"

Satoko tapped her foot on the ground before changing the movement to practically rubbing her feet against the ground before kicking it up in the air ever so slightly. Why she was making such movements with her feet, no one knew, but it was probably just her way of fiddling about when nervous. "I know you beat me at Sympathy yesterday," she replied, "and I know I said that I should have won. My brother was talking to me last night about it, too…" Her eyes trailed away from the club to a random book that was lying on the ground, which wasn't anything particularly interesting. "And you're right, I can't always win. I'm sorry for causing such a scene, and I'm sorry for everything. I'm also sorry for the traps. Sonozaki Number Two—… Shion-san is right. I'm the one that has been doing those." She changed the focus of her gaze to her shoes, which were now standing still against the cold tile. "And I won't ever do them again. I just thought it was fun but I guess it wasn't. I'm sorry," she said, though her tone was serious and dark, with a hint of some sorrow in them. "That's it."

There was clear hurt in her voice with the realization, with the thought that her traps were something bad and that they weren't something that she should continue doing. That was completely untrue, she should still be able to continue doing her traps. Why did she suddenly decide not to?

Satoko began to turn around slowly, and when she did, an alarm went off in Mion. "Wait!" she called out to the young girl, causing her to stop in her tracks and look at the girl with a rather emotionless look in her eye.

"What do you want?" she sighed.

"You don't have to stop doing traps," Mion told her. "I'm glad that you admitted that you can't always win, that's true. But your traps… I mean, they can seem a little mean at times, but it's nothing you should stop doing. I mean, you're awesome at traps, Satoko!" she cried out.

Satoko eyed Satoshi. "He told me to cut them out," she said, pointing at her brother. "He said that I was being mean and that I had to stop."  
>Satoshi looked down at his lunch and his legs twitched a little from under the desk, clearly feeling a little down at having caused such a reaction from his little sister.<p>

"Satoko," Shion said, turning to meet the young girl's purple eyes, even if they weren't looking right at her. "Shion's right, you are good at traps. If I'm right, this whole 'you can't be the best at everything' has gotten you down, right?" When Satoko just focused her gaze on the random book again to hide her facial expression from the group, Shion narrowed her eyes. "Don't lie, Satoko. It's not like lying is going to help…"

"Maybe," grumbled Satoko.

Shion frowned. "Satoko, you can't be the best at everything, but there are some things that you can be the best in the class at. You just don't need to go flaunting off your ability like that, claiming that you are better at everyone. However…" She looked over to the bin of pens to the side, grinning. "No one else in this room does traps, so I think it would be safe to say that you are the best here at traps."

"I don't do traps anymore," Satoko reminded her.

"Satoko," Satoshi spoke up, "I know I said to stop doing traps, but…" He paused to smile gently at her, so that she could take in how sweet the smile he was giving her was. "...Maybe I was thinking of harmful traps, like things that could cause serious, serious injury. Like the time you nearly dropped a boulder on that boy's head, that could have been serious. It's okay to do traps when they're just meaningless pranks that won't cause serious harm. Like… I don't know, the pen trap you did yesterday! Satoko, making traps is your thing. You shouldn't give that up, and I'm sorry for saying something like that before."

Satoko raised an eyebrow in curiosity, but she didn't say anything in response.

"Mii, I thought the time where you put sand in Okamura's shoes was really funny!" Rika said in her usual cheerful tone. "The sand didn't do any harm, it was just something that was funny. It made me laugh for days and days!"

"Well, that was a pretty good prank," Satoko admitted, the smallest of smirks growing on her face. "I think that was one of my favorites."

Mion turned to Satoko. "Listen, you don't have to give up traps! Heck, you're the best at traps! You're the greatest at traps! You may sometimes lose in Sympathy or cards, but I doubt that anyone in the room could ever live up to your ability to create traps!"

The smirk on Satoko's face inflated and became somewhat of a grin, showing off a glimpse of her shiny teeth. "Heh, well, I _have_ been practicing for a really long time, and my traps are kind of awesome…"

"Of course they are!" blurted out Mion, "just… don't say that out loud. Keep it in your head."

Satoko nodded. "So I kind of get it. I can be good and think I'm the best at traps, but I have to remember that with other things that other people do besides me, they can be better?"

Keiichi nodded. "And sometimes they can't be better," he reminded her. "Hey, even though Shion is the best at cards, she can't always be better than someone at the table! I bet that someone's beaten her once or twice."

"Gahahaha! Kei-chan's right! There was this one game I played with Onee when we were little where she completely swept me! I was left with this really stupid shocked expression on my face!" Mion cried out. She would usually be a little more careful about saying things about her past, but luckily Shion had mentioned a time like this in the past. She had to remind herself not to blurt things out like that without thinking though, because it may cause trouble later.

Shion grinned. "Aha, I remember that! I wish I had painted your face then and there. I couldn't believe how shocked you were that I had beaten you that one time!"

"Yeah, but I was kind of an expert at that game, and I had no idea that you could be just as good as me!" Mion yelled.

Both twins burst out into laughter, much to the confusion of the people who hadn't been there at the time. All of them simply grinned a little awkwardly, not finding the topic nearly as funny as the twins were.

Satoko seemed to be rather excited by such a conversation, though, and a huge grin now lay on her face. "Well I bet that I could beat someone at a few outdoor games! I have a few traps I set up here and there that could stop you all right in your tracks!" she cried out proudly.

"Mii, I bet you couldn't catch me, though!" said little Rika cheerfully so that she didn't insult the other young girl. "I'm as fast as Chiyo, my pet toy cheetah! And she can run faster than anyone else I know, aside from me of course!"

Keiichi crossed his arms over his chest, grinning at the young blue-haired girl. "Well Rika-chan really is fast…" he observed. "There was one time that I chased her around the yard for a good five minutes before I had to take a break. I couldn't even catch her to save my life!"

"Good thing you stopped too, I was scared that you would pass out or something," Satoshi commented.

"Well we'll see if my traps can put a stop to you!" cried Satoko. "I bet they could!"

Mion turned towards the yellow-haired girl, an excited expression growing on her face as her heart began to beat faster with anticipation. Was this it? Had Satoko finally come to her senses? "Does that mean that you want to join in on our games, Satoko, and not just sit there during gym like you always do?"

Satoko looked surprised by the question and froze up. She was clearly trying hard not to burst out and say yes, since she had been so reclusive before. For a while, she remain frozen, not sure what to say. "I mean, I _guess_…" she answered, sounding more like how she used to talk, though probably intentionally to hide the fact that she really wanted to.

"Good!" cried Mion. "From now on, Satoko is a member of our group!"

Everyone clapped for the yellow-haired girl, much to her surprise. She looked around at the group, dumbfounded at their sudden applause. "Um, thanks?" she replied as she took a seat in front of her bento box. She began slowly opening it, feeling a little awkward about the whole situation now. Mion sure hoped that it wouldn't scare her off or an anything, but then again, Satoko was never that weak.

Finally, she had gotten Satoko back to the group. While she still wasn't exactly the same as before, it had to do. Nothing but time would change her now, and soon enough, the need to abide by her own personality would fade away. She would probably forget about it in due time.

As everyone went back to talking about random things as they ate, with Satoko joining in the conversation, Mion suddenly remembered what Keiichi had been saying before Satoko had suddenly appeared. "Oh yeah!" she cried out. "Kei-chan and I had something to announce to you all!"

All eyes turned to the two of them, and Mion suddenly got hit with a wave of anxiety that wasn't there before. She suddenly seemed to remember how embarrassing something like love was, and she really wished that she hadn't. She gulped and played with the collar of her shirt as she looked around at everyone. Shion was smiling at them knowingly, Keiichi looked a little nervous too, and the rest of them looked very curious.

"Um… we just wanted to let you all know that Shion and I are… well…" Keiichi's eyes drifted over to the green-haired girl. "Uh…"

"We're… uh, together," Mion finished, seeing that the brown-haired boy probably couldn't.

Surprise colored the faces of Satoko, Rika, and Satoshi. However, much to the couple's relief, it didn't last too long.

"I knew it," Rika commented, a sweet yet somewhat mature smile on her face. "I knew there was something funny going on between Shii and Keiichi for a long time! And now I know why!"

Satoshi was smiling too. "Ah, I thought that you would admit your feelings for Shion sometime, Keiichi!" he told the boy.

Keiichi nodded. "I realized it after we spoke. You were right, Satoshi, I really do like Shion." He reached for her hand, brushing his against hers softly. "Thanks for your help, I don't think I would have realized the truth otherwise."

Satoko looked at both teenagers, a confused and surprised look in her eyes. "What do you mean by you're 'together?'" she asked, looking around at the group. She probably felt a little left out, seeing as she was the only one who didn't understand what they were talking about. "I don't get it. What does it mean?"

A soft hand reached over and patted Satoko on the head. "It means that they're boyfriend and girlfriend," Satoshi explained as he continued to ruffle his little sister's hair. "As in, they're in love."

Satoko looked surprised as she looked from Mion to Keiichi. "Oh? I didn't notice. I guess I didn't hang around you enough so." She smiled a little. "That's cool, I guess."

Mion just smiled at Satoko. She didn't mind that reaction coming from her, who had just joined the group. Had it been the Satoko from her world, she would have stood up instantly and shouted out something about how surprised she was that her club leader and the loser of the club was getting together, with no offense intended of course, and then proceeded to congratulate them and claim she knew it all along, despite what she had said before.

"Yeah, that's all we really have to say," Mion said, glancing over to her boyfriend with a soft smile. "We just thought it was time to tell you."

"When did you get together?" Satoshi asked.

"Not too long ago, actually," Keiichi responded, "so it's not like we've been keeping a secret from you for very long or anything."

"I already knew because Shion told me. Actually, they even went on a date this weekend!" Shion blurted out. "She told me all about it, and how they went to Angel Mort, and how she got the strawberry cake and Kei-chan chose the chocolate…"

Mion's face flustered. Shion had not wasted a second after she had told her about the date to pester her and try to squeeze out every single last detail, and yes, that included the flavor of the cake that they had ordered. Why Shion was so interested in every single detail, Mion would never know, but it was just like her sister and nothing unexpected.

"Really? I like the sundaes best at Angel Mort," Satoshi said, "those are really refreshing, especially during the summer…"

"I like everything," Rika replied with her usual cheerful smile, just happy to go along with everything as usual Rika did. "It's all so sweet."

"Sweet things are always the best!" Satoko proclaimed. "I like everything there, too! But I wish that the sundaes had a little more chocolate and a little less cherry sauce…"

Mion smiled at Satoko. She was getting so engaged in the conversation despite just having joined. Even though Satoko wasn't completely perfect, for now, she was satisfied. All that she needed now was a bit of time, and everything would be just like normal. There was nothing more than she could do. As she leaned back in her seat and smiled, she wondered how Satoko would get along now. Hopefully both she and Satoshi would be a lot happier.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After class, Mion began packing up her stuff. She slung her backpack over her shoulder. When that was done, she turned to Keiichi and smiled gently at him, and he smiled right back at her. Really, now that the secret was out, Mion felt a lot better about their relationship. For some reason, it was as if a load of nervousness that had been there before had been flung right off her chest into a deep abyss, sure to never come back.

Keiichi waved a quick goodbye to the girl and walked out of the classroom, and Mion said goodbye right back. She hoped that tomorrow they could kill a few minutes together after school at least. She really did enjoy spending her time with him…

"Shii," Rika's voice suddenly piped up, causing the green-haired girl to turn around right away and look down to the source of the voice.

Rika's hang was gently tugging at her blue skirt, a smile on her face as she looked up at the older girl.

"Hello, Rika-chan! Is something the matter?" she asked.

"No," Rika replied. "I was just going to say goodbye before I left!" She let her signature "Nipah!" after that in what Mion was sure was the cutest voice that the blue-haired girl could possibly manage to make. It melted her heart whenever the young girl did that. It was such a cute word coming from such a sweet little girl…

"Thanks, that's really nice of you!" Mion said. She reached forward and gently patted Rika's head of blue hair as a form of a silent thanks. "Goodbye to you too, Rika!"

Rika turned towards the door and began to walk away, though when she was directly in front of it, she froze right up. "Shii," Rika spoke in a tone that was unlike her usual one, one that was much more serious than how she spoke.

Mion blinked. "Yes?" she asked.

Rika turned to her ever so slightly, just so that she could see one of her purple eyes and her slight smile. "Please be careful and don't be reckless about your decisions, okay?" she spoke, this time her voice sounding much more suiting for a girl her age, though there was something chilling about it, something that caused as shiver to ruin through Mion.

"Yes, of course," Mion answered, nodding firmly.

"Thank you," the young girl replied, smiling gently at her before finally walking out of the door and out of Mion's sight.

_Now what was that about?_ Mion thought to herself, scratching the top of her head.

Before she could process or try to think about what Rika had said to her, however, another voice broke her thoughts. "Shion," came Satoshi's soft voice from behind her. "Thanks for all that you've done so far. Satoko just needs a little bit of time to fit in now. I hope you understand that. If it weren't for you, I don't think that she would be like this at all. She'd probably still be sitting at her desk, thinking about how she's the best at everything and all that."

Mion turned around to meet Satoshi's wine-colored eyes, and she couldn't help but smile a little at his kind words. "Thanks, Satoshi-kun. I've been doing my best and I'm glad that my efforts have paid off."

Much like how he usually did, Satoshi reached for Mion's head and began to ruffle her green hair, his eyes closed and his mouth curved into a tight smile. "It means so much to me. Everything you've done means so much to me. So thank you so much… I can't even begin to explain how grateful I am that you did this for me."

"Welcome, but you know I'm not the only one you should thank. Everyone did it, not just me," Mion reminded the boy, though in her heart she felt deeply moved by his words. Knowing that she had made a difference was something that made joy rise and dance within her, teetering on the edge of being let out in a gigantic shout.

"But you're the one who got her into the group, so even though the others helped, I think that you're the most responsible for it." He drew his hand back, letting it fall to his side with a loud thump. "So thanks again. I better be going, so…" He looked to the clock, nodding. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Mion waved the boy a goodbye and watched as he walked out of the door. She quickly fixed the position of her bag on her shoulder so that she was sure that it wouldn't fall off before she walked out the door herself, the thoughts of what had happened today spiraling in her head.

She stepped out into the fresh air, breathing it. She engulfed herself in how crisp the air was and how warm the sun was beating down on her, even though it was a little hot. Hot days were one of the times she was thankful for having to wear her sister's uniform, as it certainly beat her extremely long skirt that only made things even hotter.

"Hey, Shion!" a voice called to her. Mion briefly wondered why everyone needed her at the end of the day before turning around to look at who it was. Much to her surprise, it was Keiichi, who she was sure had already left.

"Kei-chan?" Mion called to him. "I thought you had already gone home for the day!"

"Yeah, but I got a little distracted." He began gesturing for her to come and stand by him. "I think you'll see why in a little bit."

Mion blinked in confusion, but she decided to come over there anyways. She was hoping that she would get to spend time with him soon, and this was her chance. As she approached the boy, she noticed that he was bent over, his eyes staring at something.

"What's a cat doing here?" Mion asked as she looked down at the ground. There was indeed a cat there, sitting and basking in the sunlight as Keiichi's hand stroked its fur. It was a mainly white cat, though its fur had been dappled with orange and black blotches here and there, but most noticeably on its back where the blotches formed a large puddle of black and orange. The rest of the cats body seemed to evenly distribute the orange and black here and there, though there was also a noticeable black patch that covered most of the cat's chin.

"I don't know, but he's a cute one." Keiichi reached for the cat's ear, scratching behind it. The cat purred with delight, enjoying the attention it was getting. "He's purring a ton. I think he likes the attention I'm giving him!"

Mion grinned. "She, Kei-chan. That's a calico cat, and there's about an extremely slim cat that a calico cat is a boy." She bent down next to the cat, reaching for her and petting her fur. She really was a soft cat. "It has to do with genetics. It needs two X chromosomes to have both black and orange fur, so calicos are always female unless they have three chromosomes and XXY, which can happen, but it's rare."

Keiichi glared at Mion. "If you know so much about cat genetics, why don't you know anything about math?" he asked teasingly.

Mion laughed. "Well, I don't really know much about cat genetics. It's just something I was told once." She reached for the cat's back, scratching her patchy back. "Besides, cats are five times more interesting than math!"

Keiichi chuckled. "Heh, you got that right."

The sound of a car roared in the distance, causing the cat to jump in alarm and scamper into the nearby bushes. The two of them frowned, slowly standing back up.

"Damn car…" grumbled Keiichi.

"It's okay, she has an owner somewhere. I think that's Tanaka-san's cat. I saw him with her before," Mion commented as she stared at the bushes.

Keiichi faced Mion, smiling. "Well, that was a nice encounter. It's not often that you see cats running about Hinamizawa." He stretched out his back and muscles, sighing with the pleasure created from doing so. "Certainly distracted me form going home, too! I bet my crazy dad is worrying his head off about me coming home a minute late!" he joked.

Mion giggled. "Aw, silly Kei-chan. You can tell him that a cute cat distracted you. I'm sure he'll understand that."

A spark of bravery grew in Mion's stomach, and she felt courageous enough to tease him again. Perhaps she was just growing a little bit bolder around him these days. She leaned in gently, placing her mouth right next to his ear. "Or you could tell him that my beauty was distracting you. I'm sure he'd understand that one a lot more!" she whispered.

Keiichi turned to her, blushing. "I mean…! I guess it's true?" he said, not sure what to make of that comment. He looked away, rubbing the back of his head. "It really was the cat that distracted me, though."

Mion giggled. "Aw, I was just joking with you, Kei-chan!" cried the green-haired girl as she slapped him playfully on the back, though perhaps a little bit harder than she had intended to. "But isn't it the least bit true? Aren't I distracting you?" She asked. She placed her hands on her hips, grinning wildly. She felt a blush grow on her face as meaning of what she had just said hit her harder, though she tried not to lose her teasing attitude with that realization.

"Well," Keiichi said. "I can't lie, you are beautiful…" he whispered to her.

Mion flinched. "Huh?" She completely lost her composure at that moment, facing her boyfriend with her cheeks flustering right up. Such a comment had caught her off guard, though in a situation like the one they were in, Mion figured that she really shouldn't have.

"Shion…" Keiichi whispered. In another spark and moment of bravery, Keiichi leaned forward towards the girl, and before either of them knew what was happening, Mion felt his soft lips brush against her own and begin kissing her gently. Her eyes wide with shock, Mion didn't know how to react. Keiichi's arms wrapped gently around her as they pushed her closer to his warm, heated body.

Confusion and embarrassment filled Mion's head and body like never before, though it wasn't enough to distract her from the warmth that was lingering all over her lips right now. That, combined with the thought that he was kissing her, and the emotions she was feeling, was enough to jumble up her mind into a gigantic heap of a mess. What should she do? Should she kiss back? What would he think if she kissed back? What if she wasn't a good kisser? _Oh, for goodness sake Sonozaki Shion, kiss him back! _her inner voice screamed at her.

However, when that decision was made, he pulled away, blushing furiously. "Ah…" he whispered. "I'm sorry about that, I just—"

Mion couldn't ignore what her inner thoughts were screaming at her to do. She had missed the chance to kiss him back, and a voice inside her head was demanding her to make up for the lost moment. It echoes and rung over and over again to the point where Mion knew that she had to do it. She grabbed him by the shoulders a little more roughly than she had intended to and clumsily pressed lips against his. She wasn't sure what she was doing, but that didn't matter anymore. With the confusion of what to do and the suddenness of the moment brushed away, she could now enjoy the feeling. Her body shook with embarrassment but she pushed that away as she ravished the feeling of his warm body against hers, of his soft lips brushing against her own.

Keiichi's trembling arms winded their way around Mion and tightly squeezed her as he responded to her kiss. Neither of them were sure if they were doing it right, but it didn't matter. It just felt too good to be wrong, too warm to be incorrect.

They slowly pulled apart from each other, gazing into the other's eyes. Mion fidgeted a little, embarrassed now that the moment was over.

_I just kissed Kei-chan_ she realized.

"Ah…" Keiichi said as he looked at her. "That was…" He seemed to be trying to put his feelings into words, but no words could truly describe what the two of them had felt. As he began scratching his head furiously in order to figure out just how to put the feelings into words, Mion stopped him by putting a single finger to his lips, which were still warm with the feeling of her own lips. This simple realization caused her to blush a little more, for the swarm of butterflies within her to speed up their dance.

"You don't have to put it into words," she told him softly. She looked deeply into his confused blue eyes, feeling love within her. "We both know how it felt…"

He slowly nodded at her, a smile growing on his face, gently lit by the pink that was spreading more and more with each passing second. "Yes," he replied, "of course."

Moments passed between them, and neither of them knew what to say to each other. All the words that needed to be said had been exchanged silently through their lips, and all the feelings that needed to be stated were already understood. There were no words that had to be shared.

"I have to go," Keiichi said finally, "but I can't wait to see you tomorrow at school."

Mion nodded her head, a little disappointed. "Okay," she said, "that's understandable. I can't wait to see you, either."

He nodded eagerly. "Okay! I'll be waiting for tomorrow, then." He turned around to walk away, though he twisted his head just to give her one last smile. "See you," he told her.

"Yeah, see you."

As the boy walked off, Mion recalled all her feelings from that moment. It had been a little bit of a clumsy kiss, but that didn't matter. It felt good enough to her, and to her, that was really and truly all that mattered.

"It's perfect…" Mion whispered. "It's all perfect, Rion."

Rion suddenly appeared with those words, looking at the girl with a look of surprise on her face. "Really?" she cried. "It is really all perfect now? Everything is how you want it to be?"

Mion nodded. "Yes," she answered, "I'm with Keiichi now, Satoko's a part of the group, Shion and Satoshi are going to get together soon… it's everything I could wish for, Rion. This world is the perfect world now," she decided, a spark of confidence in her voice as she spoke those words. "I know it is."

Rion turned to her, a huge grin on her face. "Yes!" she cried out. "I'm so glad that you're happy now!"

Mion giggled. She turned towards the sky, looking up at it. "I've decided that this world is perfect, and that's my final decision. It's all so much better now, and I can't wait for what's going to happen next now that this world is just how I want it to be…"

Rion grinned. "And I'm excited to see what adventures await you, too!" she cried. "I'll have more to be entertained by!"

Mion nodded. "You and me both, Rion. You and me both…"

It was final now. This world was perfect. Everything was exactly how Mion had wanted it to be, and there were no more adjustments that had to be made. All that she had to do was now fixed. Satoko was fine now, she was dating Keiichi, everyone was happy…

What possibly could go wrong now?

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Dear everyone: Never say, "what could possibly go wrong?" because that is always a recipe for disaster. By saying such a word, you are practically asking for a cow to drop down on your head next time you walk out on to the street.**

**And that being said, I hope you're looking forward to what I have to show you in these next chapters of **_**Within a Nightmare!**_** And thank you all for reading this far, I know you've been patiently waiting for what comes next. Of course I won't tell you what's in store, but seeing as this is Higurashi and how some of you have read my previous fanfiction, you should have a good idea of how things should roll from here on out. **

**Heh, I can't wait to write all this! I don't think I will tomorrow though, but hopefully the day after. I want to write as much as I can before… Oh god, let's not mention the word that starts with an "Sc." And by that, I don't mean "scars."**

**~Crimso**

**EDIT: AAAGH Why won't FF upload the changes I make on the document in word? . That's it, from now on, I just won't edit the document in word. I'll use the document editor. **

**EDIT 2: ARRGH stop messing up my messages, FF!**


	25. Chapter 24: Uneasiness

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I don't want to go to school. I hate school. Really, I don't want to have to work. Even though I've been spending the last two days doing my English homework and now I'm going to have to start my science experiment T_T. There was so much more I wanted to do over Spring Break. Why does it have to only be two weeks long? And it feels like forever since I've uploaded a chapter. Why?**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Four: Uneasiness_

After Mion had decided that her world was perfect, the days had flown by without a problem. There wasn't anything bad that came up or any worries aside from an argument here and there over something as silly as a misplaced pencil, but silly arguments were always just silly arguments and never got in the way of anything. Minutes would pass after an argument such as those ones, and then it would be completely forgotten.

It seemed like there wasn't a single problem in the whole world.

"Things have been really peaceful the last few days," Rion observed, "I hope that you have been enjoying yourself."

Mion nodded her head as she tied her yellow ribbon up in her hair. "I have been, and I hope the last few days have been entertaining enough for you." She turned towards the goddess ever so slightly, showing a small grin to her. "I know that our activities can seem a little boring to others at times, especially our conversations at lunch! I don't think those long conversations we have about things like seagulls are nearly as interesting as we make them to be."

Rion giggled. "I like listening to anything. Anything is better than wandering around aimlessly!"

Mion smiled. She was glad to make the goddess happy. She had heard little about her past, but from what she could tell, Rion had been very lonely over the past few years. She was just happy to interact with Rion and in turn, make her very happy. If she were Rion, she was sure that she would have died of boredom years ago. Of course, she was a spirit, and probably didn't technically die, but…

_No, spirits can die… if that were false, then how did the Kimiyoshi Oyashiro die?_

She shook her head. She didn't know much about it, and Rion didn't either. There was no point digging up things like that that wouldn't even make a difference if she were to look into it, just like the issues with the alternate universes before. She was in this universe now, and there was no use fretting over something that couldn't be changed. What mattered now was that she made the best of the world she was in, which she had already declared as being perfect.

"Everything really is perfect," she sighed as she ran a comb through a particularly stubborn knot that rested a good way down her back. "I haven't heard anyone upset in a really long time. I mean, I'm happy, everyone else is happy…"

Rion smiled. "Yes, I think that everyone is happy right now. Even with the changes made in the world, the ones that made people unhappy have been removed. The ones that make people happy are still there. I'm just happy to help out."

"Thanks for everything that you've done up until now," Mion replied as she dropped the comb down on her wardrobe. She took a moment to observe herself in the mirror, nodding when she confirmed that her hair was no longer tangled. She usually wasn't one to care about her appearance, but seeing as how the her of this world did, she had no choice but to make herself look her best. Not that she minded, anyways. Perhaps it was for the better that she made sure her hair was nice and neat. "All the encouragement that you and Onee have given me has helped me a lot in the long run."

Rion grinned wildly. "You think so? You really think so?" she said excitedly.

Mion nodded. "Of course. So from now on, I don't want to hear the words 'I'm a powerless god' from your mouth ever again. Okay?" She turned away from her reflection to face the goddess, who simply nodded her head in response with an eager smile on her face, one that told Mion that she would surely never speak those words again. "Okay, good. From now on, we're both going to live our lives without worries! After all, this is the perfect world! I know it started a few days ago, but I want to make sure of it now. Okay?"

"Of course!" Rion cried out, pumping her tiny fist into the air. "And I'll be sure to have fun with my situation!"

The teenage girl smiled and turned away from the goddess and towards the door, which had begun to open. As soon as the sliding door was pulled away, the figure of her sister walking in while rubbing her head became clear. She looked a little tired, which wasn't too surprising considering the fact that Oryou had held her in late that night to discuss a very important matter, whatever that may have been. Was it the murder? Had they figured out anything new about it?

"Ugh, I hate it when I have to stay late at night to discuss family matters," complained Shion as she rubbed one of her exhausted green eyes. "I mean, why can't I just go to bed? I've been too tired recently to deal with all this."

Mion walked up to her sister, smiling. She knew the feeling all too well, but of course she didn't share those thoughts out loud. Instead, she expressed her sympathy by patting her sister's shoulder gently with one of her hands while shooting her sister a reassuring grin that she knew that she probably wasn't looking at, considering her eyes were half shut. "You're going to be a good head some day, I know it. That's why you have to live through all those important meetings. Anyways, what was the meeting about? It must have been important, seeing as you walked into our room around an hour after I got into my futon."

Shion grew a tired smile on her face. "You'll see," she spoke. She then went to her wardrobe and snatched up the comb, beginning to let the brush work its way down her emerald locks.

Mion blinked. Well, what did that mean, then? _I'll see, huh. _She supposed that it had nothing to do with the murder, then. But what else could it be about?

She shook her head. Well, if Shion were right, she would see.

_~~~~X~~~~_

The beginning of school day went as usual, for the most part. Mion found herself tapping her pencil up and down on the desk as she and the rest of the students awaited Chie, who was oddly late. There would be occasional time where she would arrive late… but… Mion looked at the clock, barely being able to hear the ticking it made as the second hand quickly approached the next number. She was never this late.

"I wonder what happened to Chie…" Satoshi said, his usual worried expression painting his face. "I hope that she didn't run into trouble…"

"What kind of trouble would Chie run into at this time of day?" Satoko said, "what did she do? Spill her curry?"

Satoshi shot Satoko a glance, telling her with one look that that wasn't a good thing to joke about.

"Mii, Satoko's right, Satoshi," Rika replied as she stared at the clock, watching the second hand pass by the numbers as if she were hypnotized. "There's nothing bad that can happen this early in the morning. Unless she ran into some kind of trouble with someone else, perhaps someone in her family getting hurt, I don't think that she would be late. I've never heard of someone murder another person in the daylight…"

Satoshi frowned. "But Rika-chan, I wasn't talking about murder. She could easily have tripped and broke her foot or something similar…"

"Whatever it may be," Keiichi said, speaking up, "I just hope that she's okay."

Mion nodded her head in agreement. As long as Chie was okay, it didn't matter why she was late. Still, though… The minutes seemed to passing by as if they were seconds. There were times she would be a little late for one reason or another, but they were never serious and she was never later than five minutes. However, for some reason, the clock read ten minutes after class started.

"If she's okay, we can all celebrate not having ten minutes of class later!" Satoko pointed out. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm always happy to miss a minute or two of class. I may look like I'm interested in studying, but really, I hate it."

Rika wore one of her usual smiles. "I've never heard of someone that actually liked studying," she commented, "so it's not _that _surprising."  
>"I don't know. There was this character from this one book I read a year ago who was pretty into studying," Mion said. "That guy was a really boring character, though."<p>

"It's fiction. Do you think that people actually like studying outside of fiction?" Satoko pointed out.

"No," Mion said, turning to look at the yellow-haired girl with a combination of a grin and a smirk on her face, "of course, that applies to me as well."

Keiichi looked at his girlfriend. "Of course it applies to you, I'm sure that the whole class notices that you just doodling on your paper all day!" he said teasingly. "I don't blame you of course! I'd be doodling on my paper all day if I could, but then my parents would probably get really mad at me, because they're the type who are serious about my grades and that sort of thing."

"My assignments are easy," Rika spoke out, "so I don't mind too much. I loved the one where I had to draw a picture of anything I wanted, I got an A on that one!"

_Tch, I remember when school was that easy, _Mion thought as she leaned back in her chair, allowing the front two legs to lift up from the ground ever so slightly as she made herself comfortable. Her vision focused on the clock. She was fifteen minutes late now. Mion's eyes began to dart about the classroom. A few students were murmuring to themselves about how Chie was never this late, and a few others didn't seem to be worrying about it at all and were discussing some random topics. Perhaps they didn't even notice that the teacher was oddly late.

Shion seemed to be one of the more relaxed ones. She had her eyes closed as she propped up her chair close against the wall, leaning back in it much like how Mion was doing now. There was a small smile on her face, and Mion wondered what she was thinking about. Was there a reason why she was so relaxed, or did she just not notice how many minutes had passed?

"Sorry class!" a voice bellowed out, drawing everyone's attention. "We're starting a little late today, but before we start out, there's something I'm sure you all want to hear!"

Mion shut her eyes, sighing in relief. Chie didn't sound hurt at all, thankfully. She had to wonder why she was late then, but she didn't think too much about it. As long as she was okay, right? She took a few moments to relax. That was fifteen minutes out of their school day, and while that didn't seem like much, it was also fifteen minutes that Mion had spent doing something other than staring at her paper, wondering what all the math terms were supposed to mean. It was nice to relax like that every once in a while.

She opened her eyes up again and focused her vision back on the front of the classroom. And when she did, her heart nearly stopped.

_R-Rena?_

Mion nearly shouted out in shock as she noticed that beside Chie stood the familiar face of one of her good friends, Ryuuguu Rena. She had been missing this whole world, but… Wasn't she supposed to be in Ibaraki with her parents? Wasn't her regret her parents divorce, and wasn't the fact that it didn't happen mean that she didn't go to Hinamizawa? So what did that mean, then?

She shook her head as well as she surprised expression on her face. If anyone were to see her, she was sure that they would think that she was looking at some kind of monster the way that she was staring at Rena. She had to act natural and pretend like she had no idea who the girl in front of her was, even though she was still shaken by the very fact that she was here.

"Class, I'm pleased to introduce our new transfer student, Ryuuguu Rena!" Chie cried out. She turned towards the girl, smiling at her. "Ryuuguu-san, how about if you introduce yourself to the class?"

Rena fidgeted a little as she looked upon the class. "I'm Ryuuguu Rena. I moved here from Ibaraki a little bit ago. I hope to enjoy my time here in Hinamizawa!" she introduced. It was a simple introduction, but Mion did the same exact thing when she transferred here. She couldn't blame her. She had been at a loss for things to say, too.

Chie wrote the girl's name down on the chalkboard as she described herself, and when she was done, she turned towards the classroom. "Alright, Ryuuguu-san. There's a spare desk next to Houjou-kun over there." She pointed towards Satoshi, and then towards the spare desk next to him. "I'll allow you guys to have some time to introduce yourself to her, though remember that class did start a little late today! Alright class, let's get started!"

Mion watched as Rena moved towards the back, placing her bag down on the spare desk. As she did, Mion wondered what she could be doing here. Had something happened to her parents? _But that's impossible. That regret doesn't exist here. _She looked over to her side to see if Rion had materialized. She had, and the only response she got from the goddess was a shrug and a frantic headshake.

Well, she supposed she would just have to figure out what happened by herself, as invasive as that seemed.

Mion got up from her seat, and as did the rest of her friends. They all surrounded the desk belonging to the girl, who seemed to be surprised by all the people greeting her. She remembered when Rena had first transferred into Hinamizawa in her own world. During that time, she was still a little bit shaken from the divorce, but she never let that show too much. She had moved on as quickly as she could. That was one thing that Rena was good at.

"Hello, Ryuuguu Rena-san!" Mion cried out to the girl, wanting to be the first to greet her. "My name is Sonozaki Shion. I recently transferred here as well. We're all always glad to make new friends!"

Rena looked up at Mion, smiling her usual smile. "Hello, I'm Ryuuguu Rena! Well, you already know that, but…" She just smiled again to finish the sentence. "I'm glad to meet you, and I really hope that I can become friends with you, too! Hinamizawa is a really nice place."

_She's already been here before, though, _Mion thought. Her parents may have never divorced, but she had certainly lived in Hinamizawa before.

Shion was the next to introduce herself. "And I'm Sonozaki Mion, her sister!" she said, jerking her thumb towards her twin. "I'm the one with the ponytail, don't get us confused too often! But if you do, I don't blame you."

Rena looked surprised as she looked over from Mion to Shion, and then Shion to Mion, and then back again. "I've never met identical twins before, that's kind of cool!" she said happily. "But please don't get too upset if I make a mistake, I'll get it right at some point, Rena promises!"

Shion grinned. "Of course, it won't be too hard. I always wear my hair up, and my sister wears her hair down with those ribbons in them. And we always wear different outfits, too." She looked over to Mion, smiling at her sister. "You'll be used to it soon."

"I hope so!" Rena responded in a tone that anyone would expect to hear from the girl.

_She acts like the Rena in my world, _Mion thought, _it doesn't look like she's much different. But still… I wonder why she's here?_

"Do you mind if I call you Shi-chan and Mi-chan?" Rena asked the two of them.

Mion shook her head. "Not at all, that's actually a kind of cute name! Maybe a little too cute for who I am, but…"

Shion looked to her sister, smirking. "I think it suits you really well. And yes, you can call me Mi-chan. I'm fine with that!"

Mion smiled. So Rena was going to call them the same thing she called them in her world, huh? That was nice. This Rena really was a lot like the Rena she knew well, wasn't she? That thought made her want to explode with happiness. There was nothing better than having a friend in this world that was just like the old version of them.

"Hello, Rena!" Rika greeted cheerfully, "my name is Furude Rika! I'm the Miko at the Furude Shrine, and I've lived here all my life. I'm glad to have a new friend!"

Rena's eyes sparked with joy the moment she laid eyes on the blue-haired girl, and Mion knew exactly what was coming the moment she saw it. "Hau… Rika-chan, you're so cute!" she declared loudly. "I just want to take you home with me!"

Rika smiled. "Mii, do you like cute things, Rena?" she asked. "I have a lot of cute things at home. Maybe I'll bring in my cute stuffed animals so that you can see them!"

"Yes, I love cute things!" Rena cried, her usual "take it home mode" spark in her eyes. Mion couldn't help but smile a little at the fact that she still retained that trait. If there was one thing anyone knew about Rena, it was that she loved cute things. When she spotted something cute, she would go into something that the club labeled "take it home mode." It had become famous because she became nearly unbeatable when she was in "take it home mode." It seemed that her strength and competence tripled in that mode! "I'm sorry if I scared you when I said that I wanted to take you home, that just happens to me when I see something cute!"

"That's okay. I like cute things too, so I know how you feel." She turned towards Satoko, smiling. "This is my friend. Is she cute too?"

Satoko looked surprised at the sudden mention of her, and she whipped around to look at Rika. However, her attention was drawn away when she noticed that Rena's eyes were growing a similar spark in them. "Yes!" Rena declared. "She's cute too! What's your name?"

Satoko put a hand on her chest as she put on one of her best smirks that she could possibly manage. I'm Houjou Satoko, the best trap maker in this whole school! I can make an easy trap in a minute and a harder one not even in twice that time!" she boasted. She hadn't gotten over her arrogance completely, but that was similar to how she was back in her own world when it came to traps, so Mion didn't mind. "So if you ever end up with a bucket over your head, you know who to thank!"

"To thank?" Keiichi questioned.

Satoko nodded. "To thank! You'll just be so impressed by it, that it won't even matter one bit!"

Rena just giggled at Satoko, however, not offended in the slightest by her words. "Well, I can't wait to see what kind of traps that you can make! It sounds like a lot of fun!"

It was Satoshi's turn to introduce himself next. "And I'm Houjou Satoshi. I'm Satoko's older brother." He smiled gently at her before his face turned into a more nervous look. "Please don't mind my sister too much, she tends to brag a little bit…" he added on a little quietly.

Rena shook her head. "No, it's fine. I think it's kind of cute! And it's good to meet you, Satoshi-kun!" She looked around at the group. "There's so many new friends here, I'm sure I won't be bored!"

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah, there are a lot of friends here! It's really great, isn't it?" He stepped in front of Rena, grinning. "And I guess that means I'm the last one! Heh, I guess you just have to save the best for last, right?" He grinned a little at his cheesy joke, then shaking it off and pretending like he had never even mentioned it. "Anyway. I'm Maebara Keiichi! I'm fairly new here, too. I moved in just in the very beginning of June. I know you'll love Hinamizawa, I loved it right away, too!" He stuck out a hand for Rena to shake, wearing his usual grin.

Rena reached for the hand and took it in her own, shaking it happily. "It's nice to meet you, Keiichi-kun! I love it here already, and there are so many nice people here!"

The two of them looked into each other's eyes, exchanging grins. For some reason, the image of them looking happily into each others eyes prompted Mion to say, "he's my boyfriend." She wasn't quite sure what made her say that, but after those words were said, she figured it was good to stick that out there, just so that she knew.

"Oh, really?" she asked. She looked between the two of them, smiling in her Rena way of smiling. "Well, Rena thinks that you two make a cute couple! I don't know you too well or anything, but just the image of you two seems to fit right together!"

Shion smirked. "Doesn't it? Kei-chan and Shion are _so_ in love," she said, grabbing her sister by the arm and then practically shoving her into her boyfriend's side, nearly causing the two of them to collapse on the ground. "See, don't they love each other so much?"

As Rena looked at their shocked faces, she nodded. "Yes, I think that they do look like they're really in love with each other!" she decided.

And everyone laughed.

Mion wasn't sure why Rena was here, or what made her come here, but whatever it was, she was sure that it could only make things better. The group really hadn't been too complete without her, anyways. She was fine with Rena being away because she knew that Rena would be happy, but… This was great, too! The club was complete now. _I wonder what the future will hold for us now? _Mion thought.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After school, the group of them had offered to take Rena out for a tour of Hinamizawa. Although Mion was aware that Rena already knew her way around Hinamizawa, she figured it would be nice anyways. Perhaps Rena had forgot over the last few years, anyways. She had moved away when she was seven, and she had just turned sixteen this July. It was likely that she had forgotten a few things, and in fact, Mion would be surprised if she knew everything like the back of her hand from the start.

"You see, over towards the center of Hinamizawa is the great Furude Shrine," Keiichi was explaining to the girl. "It's a really big shrine, as the name implies."

"Mii, I'm the Miko at the Furude Shrine!" Rika piped right up. "It's a really nice place! I think that we should take her there and show her around the area. Not just the shrine, but the ground as well."

Keiichi nodded. "That's a great idea! How does that sound, Rena?" he asked, turning to look into the girl's sapphire eyes.

Rena smiled. "That sounds like a really nice idea!" she agreed.

Mion trudged behind the group as she listened to their conversations. Keiichi and Rika had it handled with the tour, and it seemed like they were both very eager to help her out. Mion wasn't so sure if she would be needed in this. Satoko was also chatting to Rena a little, but she still felt a tad bit awkward around people, which was understandable. Meanwhile, Satoshi and Shion appeared to have struck up their own side conversation, and Mion didn't want to disturb them. If it had something to do with her sister's love life, she knew better than to get involved. Letting it develop on it's own was the best thing to do.

Eventually, the group reached the main area of Hinamizawa. The center of the village was quite large and fit to hold many people. The Watanagashi festival was usually set up around here, so the place had been fit to hold all the stands that they needed for the festival, as well as the many people that would come for the festival, who were not always just from Hinamizawa. The main attraction, however, was the great Furude Shrine. While Hinamizawa had many shrines here and there, the Furude Shrine was the most well known. It was the largest shrine and was placed right in the center, while most other shrines had been put around the forest and mountain areas, away from the rest. It certainly stood out amongst the other shrines. It was also the center of the Watanagashi festival, where they held the titular event of opening up a bunch of futons and allowing the cotton inside to drift down the river. Those were just some of the reasons why the Furude Shrine was the most famous of all of Hinamizawa.

"It's so stunning," Rena observed as she looked up at the shrine, awe in her eyes. Mion knew that she had already seen it before, but of course the memory of the great shrine might be faded. Besides, when tourists who had seen pictures of the shrine before saw it in real life, they were taken aback by how beautiful it truly was in real life. It was a different experience actually seeing the shrine. "I saw a few shrines around here, but this one is the biggest."

Rika looked up at the much larger girl. "Mii, it's the best because I make sure to take really good care of it! Doesn't it look so clean and pretty?"

Rena nodded. "Yeah, you did a really great job, Rika-chan!" she complimented. "It's really wonderful!"

"You haven't seen it up close yet, though," Shion decided to speak up. "How about if we go up there and take a look? There's a really nice spot around there, too. It's really grassy and peaceful."

"That sounds like a good idea. Let's go!"

The group wandered towards the shrine and up the steps. There were quite a few steps to reach the shrine, as it was placed high up so that it overlooked the whole area. Mion sometimes felt a little worn out by the time she reached the top, though by now, she was used to it. The club would often come up here for a picnic or just to run about. Rika owned the place, so she didn't mind one bit and was happy to offer the place to the club.

When they reached the top, Mion looked about. Aside from the great shrine in front of her, there was a whole meadow full of waving, green grass. The sun seemed to reflect right onto the blades of grass, perking them right up. There were a few colorful flowers that grew here and there, contrasting the green color that surrounded them. It was very quiet up there, too. The only sounds that echoed throughout the area were the songs of the higurashi cicadas, which were more peaceful than annoying.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Mion asked Rena, who looked in awe of the area. "When I was little, I came up here to play with my sister every so often, sometimes with Rika, too. I think that the idea of having a picnic here would be nice, we should do that sometime."

Rena nodded as her eyes flickered about every spot of the meadow, a peaceful smile lighting up her face. "I love it. It's really nice. I think that a picnic sounds like a good idea… we can do that sometime! I know that I will enjoy it."

"Let's sit down for a bit," Rika suggested, gesturing to the cool grass. "It's nice to just sit down here and observe the area and what it overlooks."

The group did so, sitting down in the blades of grass. The sun beat down on them as they relaxed into the ground below them, and then they began to start a small conversation.

"You're going to love it around here," Keiichi insisted. "This is the perfect place. I wasn't so sure about moving from a great big city to a rural little town like this one, but it turned out this place is great!"

"You come from the city?" Rena asked.

"Yup. I'm from Tokyo. I moved here because my parents decided that we needed a change of scenery." Mion winced a little, thinking about the model gun incident. What Keiichi had just told Rena wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the full truth. It hurt Mion to think about that incident. _Which brings up why it happened in this world… _Mion shook her head. She was thinking to into things right now. She had to enjoy herself now. Nothing was going to go wrong…

Rena smiled. "Wow, that's quite a change! It's a lot different here from Ibaraki, too," she commented. "But that doesn't mean that I don't like it. The air is so much fresher here…"

"I know, that was one of the first things I noticed about this village when I first stepped here! The second was that the people here were really nice," Keiichi responded.

"Thanks for being so kind to me," Rena told Keiichi, "I was worried that I wouldn't get along too well here, but I'm glad that I was wrong."

Keiichi grinned widely at the girl with his usual powerful and somewhat cheesy grin. "We always make friends with the new people here! Everyone here was friendly to me when I moved in, of course, and when Shion transferred here, everyone didn't hesitate to greet her. Of course, she _is_ Mion's twin, but that didn't really matter. If she were completely unrelated, it would be the same. Just like how everyone greeted you." He nodded. "Yes, I'm sure that you'll fit right into our group! I think that we're really good friends already, Rena!"

Rena nodded in agreement. "Yeah, all of you are!"

Again, the scene before Mion urged her to go right up to the two of them and step right into their little conversation for some unknown reason. Mion didn't really think too hard about why she was doing these things. It didn't matter, really. "By the way, Rena, have you met any of your neighbors yet?" she asked somewhat frantically, causing a small shake to her tone. Why her voice sounded like that was beyond her.

"Ah, yes. I got to introduce myself to them yesterday. I actually came in in the afternoon," she told Mion.

Shion nodded. "And that's what Batcha and I were up last night talking about. She wanted me to show her around and stuff." She turned towards Rena. "So I did. I was really happy to know that she was moving in. It seems like we've been getting so many new friends recently!"

"Yeah, I'm always happy to make new friends, no matter what!" Keiichi said. "Let's see, I've managed to become friends with Satoko and Shion since I moved here, not counting the friends I made the day I moved here."

Mion leaned in towards Keiichi. She felt the need to grab into his hand and intertwine her fingers with his as tightly as she could, showing off her affection for him. "Yes, I'm glad that I got to meet you, Kei-chan," she told him, resting her head on his shoulder. "It's really nice meeting new friends."

"Or more than friends," Shion remarked with a wicked smirk on her face.

Mion blushed. "Yes," she replied as she snuggled a little closer to Keiichi, "or more than just friends."

Keiichi looked over to Mion. "Of course," he replied, gripping her hand in response.

Mion briefly glanced to Satoshi, who was currently occupied by the sight of a cicada buzzing in the distance. His thoughts appeared to be somewhere else at the moment. Satoko was the same, and she appeared to be poking at a patch of dirt with a stick, perhaps drawing something in the small space she had.

Rena smiled. "We'll see what kind of people I'll meet here, then. I already like everyone here already!"

"I think we'll be really good friends, Rena! You, me, and everyone else!" Keiichi cried.

"Yeah!" she responded.

And as those words reached Mion's ears, she felt an uneasiness begin twisting and dancing about in her stomach. Why was she acting so oddly? She was happy that Rena was here, right? Rena was her good friend. Heck, they were the best of friends in her world! She had been really upset over the fact that she wasn't here before, so she should be happy now, right? So why did she have an awful feeling in her right now?

Maybe it had to do with the reason as to why she was here, or…

She looked at Rena, and then at Keiichi. Then, she shook her head. No, she was acting silly… There was no way anything could happen.

She should really just smile, shouldn't she?

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Rena hasn't been written for twenty-four chapters, so since January! So I hope that I can still write her. It's been way too long. I missed her actually, even though she is my least favorite of the main characters. She's a really interesting character at times. **

**In these last two days I have, I hope to enjoy myself. I'm really going to be heartbroken the moment I walk into school in Monday. I'll probably be mentally throwing up on something (or someone). But hey, summer isn't **_**that**_** far away! I get three months to do nothing! By the way, camp starts sometime in late June. I get back a month later. I plan on starting EOG sometime in early or the middle of August, so you should be looking forward to that, along with the rest of WAN.**

**I mean, I hope you're looking forward to the rest of this fanfiction and EOG, anyways.**

**~Crimso **


	26. Chapter 25: Sunset

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**The moment I walk into school, I forget I was ever away. I wish I had written more over spring break, though. That's my only regret. Well, maybe my other regret would be not having a longer spring break, but I'm not the one in control of that.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Five: Sunset_

All Mion could do was tap her pencil up and down nervously as she carefully watched Rena scribble down a few notes in her workbook as she looked through the pages of her science textbook. A few days had come and passed since she had moved here, and every day, the air around Rena seemed to get more and more uneasy. Mion had to constantly tell herself that there was nothing wrong with Rena and that she was her friend, so she should be happy that she moved here. And indeed she was, she had been hoping that Rena would move here but had brushed off the idea as impossible. However, something about her just seemed… wrong.

It wasn't her personality. Rena acted much like how Rena did act. It was the reason why she was here that was scaring Mion. Rena had problems in the past and moved to Hinamizawa due to her parent's divorce, which was her number one regret. Yet, she had come here for some reason. Another thing that scared Mion was the fact that she had gone ahead and introduced herself as Rena, and not her real name, Reina. While Rena used the nickname Rena, her real name was actually Reina, which she never used because she wanted to create a new version of herself when she moved to Hinamizawa and to forget the horrible things that happened during her parent's divorce. So if she was Rena… then… those things happened?

_But it's her regret, Sonozaki Shion! This world has no regrets! …Right?_

Mion looked slowly over to Keiichi, who was happily doing his work and not caring about a thing that was going on around him. His great regret of the model gun incident happened, even though that was the one thing that hurt his heart to think about. It nearly drove him to tears whenever he thought about the type of person he was back then, and how much fun he had thought it was to bully children by shooting them. If that happened, then was the thing about the regrets not happening really untrue?

"If you're wondering about the regrets," Rion said as she sat on top of Mion's desk, "they didn't happen in this world. I can assure you of that. The only thing I can think of for Keiichi is that he's hiding a bigger regret that changed." She looked over to Rena, sighing. "And as for her, Shion… I've already explained that I honestly have no idea."

Mion looked at the goddess. "But don't you know the properties of this world? You told me all about them before," she whispered to Rion.

"I knew how things were when you came here," Rion answered, "I can't tell anymore.

Mion sighed and shook her head. Well, if Rion didn't know, there weren't many ways she could figure out why and how Rena moved here. She didn't want to go up and ask her, it would be rude. The subject of her parent's divorce was something that she didn't like to talk about, and something that she was very sensitive about. It wasn't something that you could just talk about casually in any situation.

_I don't want Rena to dislike me when we hardly know each other in this world. I want to be her friend, so the last thing I want to do is ask her a question like that and risk her hating me for it. Well, since she's Rena I doubt that she would actually _hate_ me for it, but it's still not a good idea. I don't want to do anything to make her hurt. Her parents must have gotten the divorce recently, too, so it could be fresh in her head. _

She tapped her pencil against the desk. Tap, tap, tap. There was nothing she could do right now aside from speculate, and that was exactly what she was going to do, then. There was no reason she should be so worried about it. This was the perfect world, after all, and nothing could ruin it for her.

She turned her head to her math homework, hoping to find some sort of distraction in it. She hated her math, but at least it would keep her mind off of things. As she looked over her sheet, she felt like it had been scribbled out in some sort of foreign language. She knew she had learned these terms at some point, and wasn't it only recently that Keiichi had explained them to her? Yes, she should know these things already. She wondered if she should just go ahead and ask him again. She would feel rude for doing so, and she didn't like the idea of Keiichi getting mad at the fact that she had just learned it from him and he had to explain it to her again. That was the last thing she needed right now.

But she really needed some sort of distraction from something right now, and Keiichi was a good way to distract her. Even if it meant using him for help again, she really did need the time to get her mind off of things. His voice was oddly helpful in soothing her a lot of the time, too. She glanced down again at her math work and cringed. Yes, she needed to get this review sheet done soon, anyways. Chie had been mad enough at her as it was, and if she waited too much longer, she didn't want to know what would happen. Perhaps the wrath of Chie she had faced before was only the beginning of something terrible…

However, when Mion looked towards her side to talk to her boyfriend, she noticed that he had gotten up from his seat some time ago. She scratched her head, wondering when he had left. She should have noticed. Quickly scanning the room for her boyfriend, she soon noticed that he was at Rena's desk, helping her with some work. She lifted herself up from her chair just so slightly and then craned her neck and twisted it a little uncomfortably so that she could get a look at what he was doing.

"You see what this chemical formula is? Well the reaction goes a little like that," Keiichi said as he tapped a picture with his pencil. "And you see what changes?"

Rena looked down at her book, nodding. "It's a little hard to do sometimes, though," she remarked. "It's not always a matter of remembering what to do…"

"Yeah, but I've only met you a few days ago, and from that I know that you're very smart and you could probably pick this up in a little bit! It's not that hard at all." He poked the page once again. "Now tell me, can you do this?" he asked, then moving his pencil over to another point on the paper while allowing a finger to rest on the picture above.

Rena nodded and began to work out whatever it was that she had issues with, and when Keiichi looked down, he let out a large grin. "Heh, good job, Rena! That's exactly what you do and you did it right, too. So I think that your science skills are looking up. If you know how to do that, then you can probably solve a lot of things." He poked another point on the page with the tip of his pencil. "Now write down this and work it out."  
>Rena began loudly scribbling down on the paper, and Keiichi looked down upon her and watched her every action with great interest. "Yeah, you're doing it just right. That's exactly the answer. If you were able to do that, I'm sure you could do anything. There are a bunch of other problems down there. Do you think that you can work them out on your own now?" he asked her.<p>

Rena looked down at the sheet, a puzzled expression on her face. "Um… I think so. I don't want to waste anymore of your time, Keiichi-kun," she responded, turning to look up at the boy.

But Keiichi just grinned his normal grin. "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I'm really doing nothing right now. Just some extra credit work in math or something like that, and to be honest, I really don't need the extra credit." He tapped a finger to a point on the paper, then circling it. "Okay, so do this part and I'll watch you do this one, and if you're good with it, I think I can leave you on your own."

When Rena began to scribble, Keiichi shook his head. "You're doing it wrong, Rena. What you do is this." Keiichi tapped a point on the page. "Not that."

"Oh, yes," Rena responded. She flipped her pencil over to the other end and began to erase the spot on the paper. "Sorry about that! I guess I just wasn't thinking!" she replied cheerfully and a tad apologetically.

"It's fine, I'll just stay here and watch you do the rest then. So, problem number six…"

Rena scribbled down the answer, earning an approving nod from Keiichi. "That's right!"

"Thank you, Keiichi-kun!" Rena responded, looking at the boy with a cheerful glint in those sapphire eyes of hers. "I really appreciate this! You're a great teacher, you know that, right?"

Keiichi rubbed the back of his head. "I guess so. Thanks, Rena. Let's just do one more…"

Mion clenched her fists. For some reason, the scene before her was making her a little angry. She looked away from it and stared at her math homework intently, as if looking at it would soothe her anger. She tried to figure out just what the homework was saying in her head, blocking out the chattering with a string of long math problems. She still had no idea what she was doing, but that didn't matter. So long as she wasn't paying attention to Rena and Keiichi, perhaps she would calm down a bit. Maybe all she had been feeling recently was just her, and there was nothing bad going on.

Yeah, the world was perfect now. There was no way that something was off or funny about Rena. Nothing bad would happen from now on, and Rena would just be good old Rena no matter what. She didn't need to be so worried or angry. So why was the scene before her so… irritating?

_No, no, no! Sonozaki Shion! Think about something else, right now! Okay, so twelve times five is equal to sixty…_

Mion looked at Keiichi and Rena out of the corner of her eye. They were laughing happily with each other, smiling like old friends even though they had just met. Mion felt her grip on her pencil tighten, to the point where there were small sounds from the pencil, as if it were crying out to tell her it was about to break in half. The pencil did not break, though it did come close.

She turned her head away. This was not helping her and it almost caused her to destroy a perfectly good pencil. She needed to focus on something else, and the math wasn't something that would cool her head off.

Her eyes trailed over to Shion and Satoshi, who were also studying with each other. Shion was laughing happily as she pointed to a certain point in the problem, while Satoshi just rubbed his forehead with an extremely confused look on his face as he tried to make sense of what was written down on the paper and why Shion found it so funny. He shook his head, clearly a little bit frustrated with his work. Of course, Satoshi didn't tend to show it when he was frustrated.

"You're so silly, Satoshi-kun!" Shion said cheerfully. "You just have to do this and then that, and everything makes sense!"

Satoshi shook his head. "But what about this part? Why did you multiply the three there?" he asked. "It doesn't make sense!"

"Yes it does! Look over to this part of the problem and think hard about it. Don't you think that multiplying by three is the right thing to do there?" she asked the boy.

Satoshi nodded slowly. "Ah, yes. It sort of makes some sense…"

Shion smiled. "I'm glad that you're getting it! I may not be very good at math, but I do know a thing or two about this part of what you're learning, and I'm just happy to help out." She looked towards the boy, and when she did, Mion spotted clear affection in those emerald green eyes. "I would do anything to help you, Satoshi-kun. So please, whenever you have trouble with anything… please come to me. No matter what it is and no matter what I'm doing."

The blonde-haired boy simply responded with his usual gentle smile. "Thank you, Mion. You've done a lot for my grade these last few days. I think that Chie would leave me out on the street of Hinamizawa and lock the doors before I could walk in the classroom if you hadn't explained that to me..."

"Well, I don't think that she would do something that extreme," Shion responded, "but it's close. She is scary when she's mad. I am used to it, though." Her fingers reached for the book, running themselves down the massive amounts of sheets that it contained. "And now, we turn to the next page and figure out the next concept. This is one that I'm really bad at , so I hope I don't explain anything wrong…"

Satoshi smiled. "Anything you do is fine for me, Mion. I'm just happy that you're helping me out like this."

"Thank you so much, Satoshi-kun," Shion replied. "You don't know how much that means to me." There was a relieved smile on her face, and the affection and love in her eyes returned as she look amount to look at the boy in front of her, the boy that she had loved for a very, very long time. Both her and Mion knew that it wouldn't be very long before the two of them became girlfriend and boyfriend, and then they would be happy forever.

In fat, Shion had talked to her a few nights ago, and then last night too, about how she thought that Satoshi would ask her out soon. She was so happy when she spoke those words, and it seemed like all the joy in the world would soon become hers. She had waited forever for the moment to tell Satoshi that she loved him, and she would do it soon. She was hoping that he would admit it to her first, but she knew that Satoshi was a little shy when it came to that. If she had to admit it herself, then that was fine. She was the braver of the two of them when it came to that sort of thing, Mion figured.

Of course, she had never seen Satoshi when it came to love, so anything could happen. If he gained sudden bravery and asked Shion out, then that wouldn't be too strange. But whatever the case was, they would be a couple soon. Satoshi would stare at her blushing, and she would look at him with love. It was impossible to deny that the two of them were both deeply in love with each other. Mion could see it, Shion could see it, and everyone else could see it.

Mion smiled to herself. She was so happy for her sister. She already had the boy that she loved, but Shion had not yet gotten Satoshi. She had been hoping for a long time that they would get together, and it seemed that they finally would. Perhaps her sister could finally be truly happy, then.

After all, when her sister was happy, Mion was the most joyous person in the world.

_~~~~X~~~~_

For whatever reason, Mion found it worthwhile to spend the second half of the day taking a good, long walk around the paths of Hinamizawa. It was pleasant outside, and the weather was not too hot. The songs the cicadas sang as they buzzed around from tree to tree were peaceful and not annoying, and they went well with the backdrop of the sun disappearing from sight, clearing an array of colors that painted the world around her.

Mion kicked a rock as she went along, thinking about noting in particular. For some reason, thinking about nothing was much more calming than thinking about something. There was just too much on her mind as of recently and a good walk, which involved spacing out as well as thinking about nothing at all was something that she really could use right now.

"Isn't the sky pretty today?" Rion observed. "Back when I was alive, I enjoyed the sunset. I found it very peaceful. I would wait every day for the sun to go down, and then I would feel ten times more relaxed. It was a wonderful feeling."

"Doesn't it still have that effect, though?" Mion asked, eyeing the goddess. "I think the sunset is very peaceful and calming too. It adds something to the sky that it probably would be missing otherwise, doesn't it?"

Rion nodded. "Of course!" she replied. "I love the sunset still. You know, when I was in this world without you, I would sit up on the overlook every day and just watch as the sun went down. It was my favorite thing to do, since there wasn't much else. The sun always made me smile, even though those times were very long and boring for me because I had no one to talk with or interact with." She looked up at the sky, taking a deep breath of the air around her as her eyes rested on the array of colors. "It's just so pretty today."

"It's just what I need right now," Mion replied as she twisted her body around to look behind her, at the clearer view of the sunset. There were a few trees scraping the sky directly in front of her, so the view wasn't the best over there. "A good sunset to keep my mind off of things."

"That's exactly what a sunset does, doesn't it? I think everyone thinks the same thing about the sunset," Rion replied. "Everyone I knew back when I was alive agreed that the sunset was the best time of day. My sister in particular enjoyed the way it reflected against the farm fields and the streams. That was her favorite time of day."

Mion looked at Rion, blinking. "You had a sister?" she asked the goddess.

Rion nodded. "Yeah, but that was a long time ago," she replied. "But I still think of the her when I look at the sunset sometimes. It's really a peaceful thing to do. So I enjoy walking out like this, and I'm sure you do, too!"

That was an interesting bit of information about Rion. She hadn't known that before. Perhaps that was why she could understand her attachment to Shion, then. Having a sister was one of the best things in the world. Even the sunset couldn't compare. "Yes, I do enjoy the sunset. I'm just going to walk around for a little while longer, perhaps enjoy it a little longer before dinner."

"That sounds like a good idea. I'll walk and watch the sky with you," Rion replied as she focused her dark yellow eyes on the sky above.

Mion smiled at the goddess before continuing on her way. This time of day was really relaxing, wasn't it? It was the perfect way for her to forget about what had been causing her so much trouble. There were times where people just had to relax and spend some time to get their mind off of things, and this was certainly one of them. These times were sometimes the most enjoyable, even if it didn't involve spending time with friends.

She let out a large sigh. Yes, she should just forget about everything right now and walk on. That was the best thing that she could do right now.

However, it wasn't even seconds later that she spotted a familiar figure in the distance. She blinked a few times, wondering what the boy she recognized as being Satoshi was doing right now. He seemed to be a little lost in thought too, and his wandering seemed a little aimless. Was he too out here to enjoy the sunset and just take a quick walk around the village?

She waved to him, and he waved right back. The two of them began to approach each other. Well, this was supposed to be a walk to spend some time mostly by herself, but it was fine if she got caught in a small conversation with Satoshi. They usually weren't about much, anyways, and conversations like that were good to take her mind off of things.

"Hello, Shion!" greeted Satoshi as he approached. "What are you doing out here?"

Mion smiled at the boy. "Well, not much. I just went out here to take a small walk and relax for a moment," she answered, briefly glancing to the side as a cicada began to fly off a nearby tree, buzzing and singing loudly as it did so. "That's really it."

"How funny, I came out here to do the same thing," Satoshi responded, wearing his usual gentle smile. "I wanted to see the sunset, too. It's nice and relaxing." He looked up at the sky, nodding as he took a moment to enjoy the beauty of the colors hanging above him, reflecting down on the world below. "It's a good way to take your mind off of things. Just look up at the sunset and enjoy how beautiful it is, and then suddenly, everything seems better."

"It's probably because of how pretty the colors are," Mion remarked as she too focused her gaze on the sky. "I don't know how that makes sense, but for some reason, it… just does. Doesn't it?"

Satoshi nodded. "The colors of the sunset are beautiful. They're really strong today, and the cicadas are particularly loud." He looked at a tree out of the corner of his eye, where a cicada was buzzing about happily as it clung to the trunk. "It's just a nice way to think about other things. Life hasn't been too bad for me recently, though."

"Really?" Mion asked him. "Things have been like that for me too, I think," she responded. "Everything seems to be going in the right direction. I mean, we have a new transfer student, I'm with Kei-chan, everyone's getting along… what more can I ask for?" she responded. She didn't mention the part about how she was uneasy about Rena, because that wasn't needed in a conversation like this. Besides, there was no way that she could explain why she would feel uneasy about her.

"Yeah, everything has been really great, hasn't it?" Satoshi commented. He looked away from Mion, to the distance. He stuffed his hands into the depths of his pockets as he began to scrape the ground with the tip of his shoe, creating a grinding sound as small pebbles began to rub into the surface below. "Satoko has been a lot better, of course. At home she's doing fine, too. She keeps talking about her traps and her plans for new traps, but of course she never tells me where she's going to set them or who she's going to play them on. And the ones that she plays on me… well, she doesn't even mention them in the first place!" He smiled at the thought. "She's still a tad arrogant about it, but that's fine. I don't mind. It's fun to listen to her talk about traps, anyways. It's her specialty and we should let her have something to brag about."

"I agree. Her traps are a lot of fun, even though they happen to me, too! You should have seen how long it took for me to pour out the dirt she stuffed into my shoes yesterday," Mion responded, recalling the memory with a small giggle. It did take a long amount of time, but for some reason, she didn't care all that much. It was actually more entertaining than anything, looking back on the incident.

"And she enjoys them a lot more, too." Satoshi paused for a moment, shifting about. His gaze remained locked on the sky, showing no indication of turning back to Mion. He placed the tip of his shoe against a rock and began to rub it against the path, the dirt escaping from the ground directly below the rock. "I know I already said this before, but I really thank you for everything you did. I know the whole club helped out, but if it weren't for you bringing her to the table with that idea of yours, she would still be like she used to be. So I want to thank you again."

Mion giggled. "You're welcome, Satoshi-kun, but you've already said that before," she replied.

"I know," he responded. "I just wanted to thank you again, because I truly am grateful and I could never speak enough words to thank you as much as I want to. You've done a huge favor not only to me, but to Satoko as well." He turned ever so slightly to her, looking at her out of the corner of his purple eyes and letting out a small smile. "You have no idea how much that means to me. You never gave up on Satoko, and you worked hard to get her to the group for me. I… I really thank you for that. Again… and again… and a thousand times over…"

"You don't have to thank me that much," Mion responded, smiling. She felt touched that he would say all that, but there was really no need to anymore. "I know how you feel about it, and you shouldn't have to thank me this much. You thanked me before, don't you remember? Just that is enough to make me happy."

Satoshi nodded. "But I'm not satisfied with just thanking you once. I don't know, I had to thank you again," he responded. His gaze shifted back to the sky as the heel of his right shoe began to grind against the path, shaking up dirt and tiny pebbles. "So…"

Mion smiled. "I'm glad that I could help you, Satoshi-kun," she responded.

There was a moment of silence after that, and Satoshi did nothing to try to break it. He just stared at the sky, kicking up dirt with his heels and the tip of his shoe as he did so. Mion wondered if she should say something, but he seemed to be intrigued by the sky and she didn't want to interrupt him. She settled for just smiling at him, feeling warm from all the thanks that he had given her. He definitely didn't need to thank her again, but it made her feel happy. Knowing that she had changed things made her overjoyed.

Satoshi tapped the ground with the tip of his shoe. Every once in a while, he would switch which foot he was using to tap the ground. His arms were behind his back, his hands meeting together and his fingers twiddling about with each other. She didn't know what he was doing. Perhaps she should interrupt his gazing and start up a new topic or something. He was acting strangely.

"Satoshi-kun—" Mion began to speak.

But before she could get another word out, his head turned around to look at her. "Shion," he breathed.

"Yes?" she responded.

His body flipped around completely so that his whole body was now facing her. In a flash, he grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes for about two seconds. Then, before any of them knew what was happening, his lips founds hers and his arms wrapped tighter around her, to the point where he was practically squeezing the life out of the stunned girl.

Mion's eyes opened up wide and she had no idea how to react. She took a few seconds to process what was going on, and then when she realized that he was kissing her, she began to struggle in the embrace. Fear escalated in her heart, as well as shock, and she allowed her body to react naturally to the situation. Her body forced her arms to find his chest and quickly push against it, causing the arms chained around her to unlock and his body to stumble backwards, his lips releasing hers.

Mion stood there, stunned as she blinked at him. She tried to find her voice, to move, to change her expression, but she couldn't. She looked absolutely _horrified_.

Satoshi looked startled. "I-I'm sorry, Shion!" he cried out. "I know you like Keiichi and he's your boyfriend and all that! I know that! B-But even so…!" He buried his face into his hands, shaking his head into them. "I still like you…!"

Mion couldn't react. She couldn't think. What in the world had just happened there? One moment she was sure that Satoshi was in love with her sister, and then the next moment he goes and kisses her. How? How was he in love with her? Why? Why did he suddenly love her and not Shion? What did those looks of affection he gave Shion mean, then? Were they not what she thought they were?"

"I'm sorry, I really like you…" he replied. "And I know you're dating Keiichi, but I want to be your boyfriend…"

She tried to choke out a response, but nothing came out, so she settled for just standing there, stunned.

He sighed, shaking his head. "I knew it. I shouldn't have asked, and I shouldn't have kissed you like that." He looked down at the ground, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he drew patterns on the ground with his shoe. "I… I'm sorry."

"D-Don't you like Onee?" Mion finally managed to croak out.

Slowly, Satoshi shook his head. "No. I like Mion, but only as a friend," he answered, his gaze still pointed to the ground.

Mion fidgeted. She had no idea what to make of this. She was sure that he liked Shion, and so was Shion! And Shion had been so happy about the idea of them going out… Oh god, what was she going to tell Shion? How in the world was she going to react to this? She looked up at Satoshi, a stunned look in her eye. "I'm sorry," was all she was able to speak out, "I love Keiichi."

"Of course," he replied. He looked down at the patterns he had drawn below, nodding to himself. "I… I thought you would say that."

His head jerked away, and Mion could see a tear began to roll down his face. He faced his fears and looked Mion directly in the eyes with his tear-filled ones, which were slowly beginning to produce more and more tears that streamed down. The moment their eyes met, Mion instantly felt like a horrible person. A pain struck her in the chest and caused her body to become tense and shaky, realizing that she had just made Satoshi cry. What was she supposed to do? Pretend that she liked him? She told herself that there was no way around it, and that she had to say no either way and cause tears.

But… Satoshi… he was so sad. Mion knew the fear of being rejected. She felt it in her heart several times, and it was one of the things that pulled her back from screaming out her love for Keiichi to the whole world. Cruel pain continued to twist about in her heart. She hated this. She hated that Satoshi was crying over her, and that she had made him cry. She hated causing him pain. But what was she supposed to do? Guilt washed over her. She suddenly began wishing that she could just disappear in a puff of smoke. Perhaps then Satoshi wouldn't be so heartbroken.

"Well then…" Satoshi said, his voice shaky from the tears. "I'm going home. S-Satoko is going to be worried…"

He didn't even bother to say goodbye as he whipped around and dashed off into the other direction, tears flying behind him. A drop hit the ground near Mion, and she looked at the stain it caused to appear on the dirt, another surge of guilt twisted inside of her. She turned to look at the retreating boy, and it only caused that new pain to hurt more.

_Sonozaki Shion…_ She told herself, _come on. You don't love him. You couldn't lie. You couldn't avoid heartbreak. You did what you had to do._

She nodded to herself as she turned in the opposite direction and walked back to her house. The peaceful sunset shined above her, but the only thing that she could think about was how torn Satoshi's heart must have been, and the guilt in her chest only grew with every second. Not even the sunset could distract her from those thoughts.

_It's okay, Shion. He'll get over you soon…_

But on the inside, she doubted it.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Yay for reusing chapter titles! …That shouldn't be what's on my mind after writing this, huh? Well, I just went up there and changed it so I guess that's why I said that first. Anyways, yeah. SatoshiXMion. It's a bit of a sudden change of events, but that's what I wanted it to come off as. A huge painful slap in the face. I hope that worked out. **

**On another note, I shouldn't be up this late doing writing when it's Tuesday. A school night, no less. But let's admit it, even if I went to bed at twelve instead of one, I wouldn't even fall asleep until about the same time I manage to fall asleep after writing this late. But then again… waking up at seven AM is extremely painful. I should get back into the habit of writing during the day. Plus I need to move one of my cats. I don't like it when he steals my bed.**

**~Crimso**


	27. Chapter 26: Misjudgments

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I enjoy long weekends. They're very relaxing, plus I hate school. The quarter ended and I'm sure I just got stuck with some awful grades. Oh well, here's hoping to a better fourth quarter, full of good grades and a lot of WAN!**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Six: Misjudgments_

Mion could not bring herself to tell Shion about what had happened the other day with Satoshi. It was just too hard, and she knew that Shion would not take the news well in the slightest. She did not want to see her sister get mad at her, either. What did she do, anyways? All she wanted to do was help out Satoko so that she could get a perfect world. Now, it seemed as if that caused Satoshi to fall in love with her. So what was she supposed to do, then? Not help out Satoko? Or…

She shook her head. There really wasn't much she could do, now was there? Satoshi was in love with her. It was doubtful that he would give up on his feelings for her despite what had just happened. It was just too much for poor Mion to take. Well, maybe she could bet on the chance that he will get over her and switch onto her sister, but she wasn't so sure about that. Moving on wasn't that easy.

"What do I do?" she whispered into her futon. "What am I supposed to do, Rion? Onee is going to kill me when she finds out what happened, and it's not even my fault!"

On cue, Rion faded in beside the girl, sitting on her knees and looking down at the girl, who was currently collapsed on her futon. "I don't know, Shion. I don't know…"

"Everything's a mess right now," she muttered into the futon, her voice muffled by the fabric. "I'm going to die. Onee is going to kill me… She loves Satoshi-kun so much, and now that he loves me and he's probably not going to give up on me… what do I do?"

"She's not going to kill you," Rion reassured her, "that's a little too extreme, don't you think?" She smiled gently at the girl, even though she knew that Mion could not see her grin. "I doubt that she'll be too upset. If you explain to her what happened, she'll understand why. She's your sister, after all!"

"You don't know Onee, then…" Mion grumbled.

Rion sighed as she looked down upon the green-haired girl. "It's okay. Satoshi's attachment to you may not even be much. I bet in some time, he'll realize that he really likes Mion, and not you! Everything will flip right around back to how things used to be! If you walk around with that thought in your mind, I'm sure things will get better."

"Except it's not that easy to get over someone," Mion said. "You were there, Rion! You saw how heartbroken Satoshi-kun looked when I told him that I couldn't date him, that I loved Kei-chan, and that I was sorry! I felt like someone had just taken a knife and stabbed me through the chest, and I'm sure he felt like someone else had taken a _sword_ and slashed him to bits!"

Mion cringed as she recalled the look on Satoshi's face, and the feeling that she had gotten from such an expression. Even now, thinking of such an expression sent a jolt of guilt through her body, shaking her very core and diluting her thoughts with the feeling. She clenched her teeth together and balled her fists, grasping onto a handful of fabric and twisting it in her hands. She had never been rejected herself, but she could easily imagine the feelings.

She pictured herself, standing in front of an apologetic Keiichi in front of the schoolhouse. Slowly, he would shake his head, and reply that he could not go out with her, that there was someone else that he loved. Just the image of his face combined with the sorrowful tone that she knew he would use set a knot of pain in her stomach and ordered it to twist and turn about, squeezing out whatever hurtful feelings it could, which then promptly scorched her heart. It felt _awful._

She slammed her fist down on the ground. She had caused Satoshi to feel that pain, only surely worse as her thoughts of it were only her imagining such a situation. If it really did occur in front of her, then she knew that the stab to the heart she would feel would shoot out twice the pain.

A tear streaked down from her face. How could she do something like that? How could she cause that kind of pain to one of her friends? She knew it would hurt him, but what was she going to do otherwise? Lie to him? That would just be more painful. She didn't love him, and that was just the truth. There was no way that she was going to break up with Keiichi for him. Besides, there was someone better for him…

"But will he realize that Onee is the one for him?" she wondered out loud. "Rion, I just don't know…"  
>Rion smiled at the girl. "Don't you worry about a thing, I'm sure that he'll figure it out. So for now, don't say a word about it to Shion. She doesn't even have to know that it happened."<p>

_That's right. If I just wait for him to love her, and to realize that I'm not the one he should be in love with… then maybe, just maybe Shion won't find out about a thing, and she won't hurt me in the slightest. Though I suppose that I was exaggerating before…_

Mion pulled herself up from the futon, turning to look at the smiling goddess. When she saw the girl's grin, she nodded determinedly. She could believe in that smile.

_I'll just let things continue on as they are, and then hopefully… well, hopefully, things will get better. It won't stay this way. Things will change and Satoshi will move on._

If she kept that in mind, she was sure that things would get better in time.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion had nearly forgotten that today, Oryou had scheduled for a large amount of the Sonozaki family to come over for a large dinner. Their family didn't usually meet up, and when they did it was usually for some kind of holiday. However, when Mion had asked why Oryou had decided to bring the family together, Shion just shrugged and said something along the lines of "she just felt like it would be a good idea."

Not that Mion was upset at the idea. Actually, she was quite happy. How long had it been since she had seen her parents? She rarely got the chance to see them these days. Since they lived in a different house in Okinomiya and didn't come over all that often, it was highly likely for Mion not to see her parents for whole months.

Now that she was in Shion's position, she wondered how things would go over with the rest of the family. There were several members of the family that still didn't appreciate her existence, and she was sure that it would be the same in this world as well. Of course, her great uncle who had been particularly upset about the whole thing was now dead, but that didn't mean that there were others who wouldn't be too fond of her.

Well, she supposed that didn't matter. That was what being Shion came with. She could put up with it, no problem.

"I hate seeing so many relatives," grumbled Shion as she fixed up her black kimono in the mirror. She took a moment to observe how she looked, slowly nodding when she decided that her appearance was just fine. "I mean, I like seeing Mom and Dad, but there are so many people I would prefer not to see again. Don't you remember all those people back then who said nasty things to you?"

Mion nodded. Honestly, how could she not remember? Even if she did not originally come from this world, she could remember the days in her own world where she was hated by the Sonozaki family simply because she was five minutes younger than her sister. That all when away when she had stole her sister's tattoo by accident, but the memories were still fresh in her mind. Her childhood had not been all that easy.

"Of course I remember," Mion responded as she ran her fingers down the black fabric of her kimono. It matched her sister's, and the only way that anyone could tell them apart now was by the hair. "I don't really want to either, but at least I get to see some of the family members that I do like. Some of our family members hate me, but some like me. Don't you remember?"

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I can forgive the ones who don't like you for what they did to you when you were little," grumbled Shion as she fixed up her ponytail. "I hated what they did to you, and what they made you do. How dare they…"

Mion could only smile. Her sister was such a caring person, always siding with her sister. When someone attacked Mion, that same person was attacking Shion. When someone threatened Mion, they were also threatening Shion. The same thing worked the other way around. The twins certainly didn't appreciate anyone that didn't like one of them.

Shion turned around, and a huge smile lit up her face when her green eyes focused on her sister. "Oh wow, that kimono really suits you, Shion!" she responded. She wandered over to her sister, at her body with shining eyes. "Wow, you look really pretty in that kimono. I bet if Kei-chan saw you now, he would be stunned!"

Mion blushed at the thought. Would he really be? She didn't know, but she sure hoped so. "Ah, thank you Onee. I think that you look beautiful in that kimono, too." Naturally, she did. If something looked good on Mion, then it had to look good on Shion. They were identical twins, after all.

"Thanks," responded Shion with a small giggle. She turned towards the window, a joyful expression on her face as she placed a fist under her chin, taping it with a single finger. "I wonder…" she began to speak, "would Satoshi-kun think I look beautiful if I walked up to him in this kimono?"

Those words hit Mion as if they took the form of a gigantic rock and slammed right onto her head. She tried not to cringe as she remembered what had happened the other day. _Just shake that thought out of your head, Sonozaki Shion. He's going to fall in love with Onee someday, and you know it too. _"I think he would," Mion responded, putting on the happiest face that she could possibly manage to make. "I think that any boy would snatch you up in a second the moment that you showed yourself to them wearing _that_ stunning kimono!"

Shion smiled at her sister. "Thank you, Onee! I bet that any boy would take you when they saw you in that kimono, too. But I suppose it doesn't matter, does it? I guess you don't want Keiichi hitting a bunch of lustful boys over the head!" she joked.

Mion tried to grin, but she couldn't really. The grin that came out was a little shaky and did indeed seem forceful, something she hoped her sister didn't notice. "Ah, I don't think I would want that at all! But if any boys thought that, I would tell them all 'sorry, but I already have a boyfriend!' Kei-chan is the only one for me right now!" It was painful to speak those words. She did just have to a while ago, after all.

"And I'd say the same thing, but with Satoshi-kun, of course." She blushed and giggled a little, looking to the side of her. As she thought more about the boy she liked, she began to squirm a little. "Ah, one day, him and I are going to be so in love…"

"That'll come soon, I'm sure," Mion just barely managed to choke out.

"Yes," Shion responded. She paused for a moment, allowing herself to thing more and more about the boy that she liked. When she finally spoke, she spoke words Mion did not want to hear. "I'm going to tell him tomorrow about how I feel. I think that he likes me too and it's about time we move on with our relationship! I can't wait to see what he says!"

Mion felt her turn to stone and plummet to the bottom of her stomach. Her mouth and tongue searched for words to speak, but they could find none. Shion couldn't confess now, not after what Satoshi just went through! He needed some time to get over her! He needed to fall in love with Shion first before she could make her move, or…! "Don't!" was the only word she managed to cry out in her alarm.

Shion blinked in confusion. "Huh? Why not?" she asked her sister.

Mion wanted to elaborate on why, but she didn't know how to put it into words, or in that moment, even how to speak. "Because, erm, uh… well um… don't you think you should give it more time?" were the words that she managed to find in that moment.

"Give it more time?" Shion echoed. "But I don't think it needs more time. I know that he likes me, and I like him. I've been dreaming of the day for a while now, and I think it's time I stop dreaming and get that into reality." She smiled gently, a light pink blush on her face. "It's going to be perfect…"

"Nope! Definitely needs more time! I'd say he likes you, but not quite! …I mean, I'd say he likes you, but he hasn't sorted it out yet!" Mion blurted out. That was a pretty unfortunate slip, but she let it go. Shion wouldn't think much of it. "You know how Satoshi-kun is! The guy is kind of shy, and I guess it's true for the matter of love, too."

Shion still looked rather confused, and after giving it a good few moments, she narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Is there something wrong that you're not telling me about?"

"I'm being honest!" protested Mion. "That's really what I think, Onee! Just give it some time!"

Shion tapped her foot on the ground, her face losing its suspicion. She let out a small sigh, and then looked to the side. "Well, I guess. It depends, really. Maybe if you put it that way, I'll wait until tomorrow and see how I feel, and how he feels. Does that sound okay?"

Relief washed over Mion. Perhaps Satoshi would still be upset over her confession, and she would realize this and decide that it would be better for her not to bring it up. "That sounds good. Just wait and see how you are tomorrow and how he is, and if he seems to like you, go with it." There was a chance she would still do it if she phrased it like that, but at least it would hold things off for now. Besides, it was possible, but less definite than before. At least that, right?

"Okay, that's what I'll do. It seems like a better idea, anyways." Shion smiled to her sister, giving her a confident nod. "Yeah, I know that's what I'll do now. Thank you, Shion!"

Another wave of relief hit her. She could relax now. Things may just go in her favor if she didn't say anything tomorrow. "You're welcome."

"Right, and now that that's sorted out…" Shion turned towards the door to their room. "…It looks like we should be going out there. I think that a few people have come already, and we don't want to be late or anything."

Mion nodded. "Right."

_~~~~X~~~~_

The Sonozaki Manor was thankfully quite large, for if it weren't, everyone in the place would probably be shoved against another person by now. The Sonozaki family had quite a lot of relatives as well as people who were affiliated with it, and they had been invited too. Mion sighed as she stood against the wall next to her twin sister, watching the many people talk to each other. The two of them had no interest in conversing with the various people in there, who mostly weren't related and instead worked for the Sonozaki family. Shion sat there with the knowledge in her head that she would be pulled aside and talked to by many, many Sonozaki family members, which was something that Mion knew annoyed her.

"Ah, there you two are!" a familiar voice bellowed out, though this one wasn't one that made Mion want to hide.

"Ah, Dad!" yelled Shion, "I was beginning to think that this place had been flooded by a bunch of random affiliates!"

Mion couldn't help but grin as she spotted her father walking towards her. Finally, someone she knew and wanted to see. It had seemed like lifetimes had flown by since she had seen her father. Come to think of it, the last time she had seen him was when she was back at the hospital!

"How are you girls doing?" the twins' father asked as he looked at his daughters with a large grin on his face. "I've missed you a lot, and I'm sorry I can't come by more often."

"It's fine, Dad, I know things keep you busy at times," Shion responded. "I've been fine. The work for the family is completely boring and annoying, but otherwise things have been great. My friends at school are nice, we're all getting along, and of course, I have Shion with me now!" She turned towards her sister, shooting her a huge smile.

"Ah, of course! I know how much you missed your sister and wished for her to come and stay with you. I'm glad that your grandmother finally allowed for that to happen." He looked over to his younger daughter, a slightly worried look in his eye. "And how have you been doing? Are you better now?"

It took Mion a moment for her to realize that he was referring to how she was before she entered this world. The Mion before her that had been living here was a depressed blob that never spoke to anyone and spent all day wandering around with a sorrowful expression on her face. "Ah, yes, I'm much better!" she responded. "Perhaps that fall did some good to me! Hehe, I'm kind of glad I fell off a cliff now!"

"Aw, now that's not something we joke about," responded her father, "that was a horrible incident. I personally think it was your sister here that did the trick."

Shion grinned. "Well, I don't think I should take much credit. She kind of acted like that the moment she walked out of the hospital."

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't the fall, though," the twins' father replied. "But I'm glad to hear that you're doing much better, Shion. You don't know how much it killed me knowing how you were doing. I wanted to step in and do something about those Sonozaki folks who did those things to you, but I wasn't born into this family and had no control over it. Trust me though, I came near breaking one of their arms."

Shion looked up at her father, smiling. "And I'm glad you didn't do that, because then we wouldn't have a father."

He laughed quite loudly in response to that. "Ah yes, I think it's safe to say that. Though that nasty Kurou that was causing you that heap of trouble is gone now. I hate to say it, but that man got what he deserved." He frowned as he recalled the man who had caused so much trouble for his youngest daughter. Really, he was horribly against the idea of letting Shion live, and was probably one of the reasons why Oryou hadn't let Shion into Hinamizawa before. He did everything he could to make her life a living hell.

"And you shouldn't say things like that here, either, because I don't want to be fatherless," Shion responded.

"Right, that's not so good to say when I'm surrounded by people who knew him, isn't it?" He looked behind him, finding that the Sonozakis nearby were still lost in conversation. "Well it looks like no one heard me, so just know what I said was true and don't repeat it, alright?"

Mion smiled up at her father. "Right."

"Ah," the twins' father spoke. "Here comes your mother."

As Mion looked over and saw that her mother indeed was coming to see them, she realized just how long ago the cliff incident had been. It was nearing the end of August now. She had fallen off at the tail end of June. Had it really been two month since she had come to this world? It certainly didn't feel like it. It seemed like years had gone by…

"Hello, Mion. Hello, Shion," Akane greeted the twins. "It's been a long time, hasn't it? I'm glad to see you two in such good condition. It looks like the two of you have grown a little since I last saw you!"

"Aw, come on, Mom!" Shion replied, giggling. "It's only been two months! I doubt that I've grown any taller!"

Akane just laughed. "Well, I wasn't thinking just about height, dear," she responded.

Mion averted her gaze. "Don't make embarrassing observations while Dad is around!" she just about shouted, though she managed to control herself so that she didn't attract any unwanted attention.

"It's not that embarrassing, I'm your mother, and I can say what I want! And besides, he's just your father! It's not like it's embarrassing to talk about things with your parents, right?" she asked, shooting her husband a small grin. He responded by shifting around a little, but said nothing.

"Mom!" groaned Shion.

Akane chuckled a little. "I was joking, dear. Anyways, I'm glad to see you in good condition, Shion. I was really worried, especially considering what you've gone through the last few years." She sighed, an expression of guilt on her face. "I really should have done something about it, but… Well, at least we can relax knowing that awful Uncle Kurou got what he deserved—"

"Mom!" interjected Shion. "I don't want to be motherless, either!"

"Yes, but I think that most people standing in this room would agree with me. The one that would murder me would be Mother, and she hated him too." She shook her head. "What a nasty man, though I wonder who could have killed him."

"Still no information, huh?" sighed the twins' father, "at this rate, I doubt we'll ever find out the murderer."

"Well, there is a surprisingly low amount of clues. Whoever the murderer is, he was pretty careful about concealing his identity. I don't think they'll be going after any of us like some of the Sonozakis are worrying, though. The murderer would have done something by now." She glanced behind her back briefly. "Though this is a rather grim subject. Let's talk about something a little more exciting!"

Mion blinked a few times. "Like what?"

"Hm, well speaking of you two growing, have any of you managed to get a boyfriend yet?" she asked the two girls. "And you don't have to be shy about telling me, of course!"

_What does that have to do with getting a boyfriend? _"Well I—" Mion began.

However, Shion saw the opportunity and leapt upon it. "Oh, well you see, Shion here has a boyfriend!" she spoke in her sly, teasing tone. She narrowed her eyes in a mischievous fashion, smirking gently at her sister. "His name is Maebara Keiichi. You know, the boy that moved here a little while ago?"

"Oh!" Akane said, joyous surprise in her tone. "That's great, Shion!"

Mion was about to say something again, but Shion decided to cut in the moment she was about to speak. "And they love each other _sooo_ much. All Shion here talks and thinks about is her handsome Kei-chan and how much she wants to spend all day with him, and all night with him…"

The twins' father looked a little stern. "If that boy has done anything I think he's done…" he muttered threateningly.

"No!" shouted Mion at once. "We went on a date and kissed once! That's really it!"

"Okay, just let the boy know that if he does anything to her—"

"Dear, please," Akane said gently, "Shion's a teenage girl, she can have some control over what she does with her boyfriend… Though he is right in a sense, Shion."

"Yeah," Shion piped up, "I don't want to be spending the next few months helping you and Kei-chan come up with names."

Mion caught onto the implications of Shion's words immediately and looked about ready to send her flying into the wall with her fist. _Damn, why do my parents and Onee have to talk about such embarrassing things! Can't we just talk about something nice? _She wanted to burry her face in her hands and hide herself from her family, but she knew that doing so would only make Shion feel victorious.

However, before anymore embarrassing topics could be brought up, the conversation between the family was interrupted by another approaching figure, though Mion could hardly call it a lucky cut.

"Hello there," chimed a calm yet taunting adult male voice, "if it isn't my sister and my beautiful nieces."  
>Shion narrowed her eyes. "Hello, Uncle Mitsuo," she greeted coldly, not even trying to hide her upset tone.<p>

The man let out a nervous laugh. "Oh come on now, is that any way to greet your uncle, Mion-san?" He turned toward Akane, a grin that was probably false on his face. "I haven't seen you in a while, my dear sister. Business has kept me busy."

Akane nodded. "Indeed, it has been a while," she responded in her usual tone.

This man was one of Mion's uncles, Mitsuo. He was a few years younger than Akane and often spent a lot of his time doing work further away from the family. Mion and Shion did not like him at all. He acted quite friendly a lot of the time, but he was not a very nice man, to say the very least. He was one of those people who were rather upset about the existence of twins in the Sonozaki family, believing that the Sonozaki should always stick close to tradition. Needless to say, he was never very kind to the younger twin.

"Ah, this is new," Mitsuo said, allowing his gaze to focus on Mion. Mion nearly stiffened under the man's watchful eyes, finding his gaze most uncomfortable. "I believe that you were living in Okinomiya, weren't you? I heard that you had moved in here a little while ago."

"Yes," Mion responded. "I did."

He smiled at the girl, causing her to scream the word "_liar!"_ in her head. She just barely managed to stop that word from slipping off her tongue, and luckily no one seemed to notice that her mouth had become oddly tight in an attempt to stop it. "That's nice, I suppose you two really missed each other, hm?" he spoke in his mock-friendly tone. "And you're wearing matching outfits, too! Isn't that cute?" That last part sounded a little hostile to Mion's ears.

Mitsuo turned over to his sister. "Oh yes, dear sister. I was hoping that you had learned a little lesson since the last time we met, and I suppose you haven't judging by the time we've spent together today."

Akane blinked, probably thinking something along the lines of "we barely said anything to each other." It took her a little while to actually respond, though. "What lesson?"

"It's a simple one, really. I'll tell you a story, how about that?" he told her. When she just nodded in response, he continued on. "Well a very odd thing happened to me the other day. I was away from Okinomiya for some work in a close by city, and the hotel I was in at the time just happened to give out newspapers. Anyways, when the newspapers came, they happened to give me two newspapers."

Akane blinked. "Did they really?" she asked, trying to come up with something to say about the odd story.

He nodded. "Indeed they did. So the first thing I did was look through them, and I quickly realized the second one was exactly the same as the first. I was expecting two different papers, but I suppose not. They gave me two things that were exactly the same! They looked the same, had the same content, everything. So you know what the first thing I did was, sister?" he asked.

"No," Akane replied, "what was the first thing that you did?"

"I threw it in the garbage. Crumbled it up and tossed it away without a second thought. You want to know why?"

Akane seemed to be a little irritated by this tale. "Why did you throw it away?" she asked, sounding just a tad annoyed.

"Because it's a copy. Exactly the same. There is no need to have two of something." At that moment, he turned towards Mion, looking directly into her eyes with his piercing yellow gaze. "Copies are useless trash and deserve to be thrown away without a second thought. There is no place in this world for copies."

Mion shuddered, realizing what exactly her uncle was trying to tell her mother. Shion seemed to too, and she was not happy about it in the slightest. She looked ready to murder her uncle on the spot with her own bare hands.

Those words shouldn't have hit her has hard as they did. They seemed to pierce right through her, wounding her greatly in the process. It had been a long time since someone in the family had done that to her. Of course Oryou would treat her badly because of her being the second-born twin, but she knew on the inside that Oryou actually did care about her, so it didn't hurt. But this was a whole different matter. The man in front of her was actually comparing her to trash. She felt the words sting her deeper the more she thought about them. When was the last time that words like those had hit her that hard?

Akane didn't seem too pleased, either. "Okay, I get what lesson you want me to learn, so I want to tell you another lesson that I have learned over the last few years. I don't have a story for it, just a lesson."

"And what's that?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You can't compare people to newspapers," she almost hissed out.

Mitsuo looked taken aback by his older sister's response. "Ah, I suppose not, but it's not just newspapers that can be thrown away. I prefer not to have identical copies of books, either. Those can go in the trash as well." He looked over to another spot in the room. "And it looks like I see someone from work. I'm going to talk to them. It's nice seeing you again, Shion-san, Mion-san," he spoke, which made Shion roll her eyes. "And of course you too, sister. Perhaps we'll meet again soon."

The man wandered off, and when he was away from sight, Shion began to grumble. "You can't compare people to books, either."

"Let it be," sighed Akane, "your uncle is just a bitter man who can't do anything more than lash out a few words." She turned towards her younger daughter, an apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry, Shion. You don't deserve that. You're worth more than what he claims."

"Ah… yes," Mion responded, managing to snap out of her thoughts. "Of course…"

She knew that she had been disliked in this world and was able to live with the knowledge that most of the family despised her in this world, but never had she come face to face with someone who would actually say something like that. Now, the reality of being Shion in this world was hitting her harder in the face, as well as just what she had to deal with in her life to come. She was not Mion over here, loved and respected by everyone. She was just plain old Shion, who could be compared easily to a pile of trash or an extra newspaper.

"Shion," the twins' father spoke up, "I don't want you believing in what he says. The day you were born is still the happiest day of my life, and I still loved the both of you the moment I first saw you two. I didn't ever favor either of you over the other. Never did I think of you as an extra copy. I thought having identical twins was a blessing. I never want you to forget that."

Mion just nodded. Those words definitely helped clean out the wound her uncle had just inflicted on her, but it wasn't free from dirt yet. Deep in the back of her mind, she could only think about what the other family members must think of her in this world, and how they wanted to throw her away like some useless extra…

"Shion," Shion whispered to her sister, "please don't think too hard about it, I—"

"Mion!" shouted Oryou's powerful voice. "There you are, I've been looking for you everywhere! I need you to come over here with me and talk! People have been wanting to see you, and I what do I find you doing?"

Shion groaned. "But I don't want to talk to those guys! They're just businessmen connected with our family and annoying relatives! I want to—"

"Mion!" yelled Oryou. "Come over here right away, or I'll hold you for longer during our next session!"

"Damn, I hate doing this stuff," grumbled Shion. She turned towards her sister, smiling apologetically. "I have to go do some stuff, sorry. I'll talk to you after Batcha releases me." Her gaze drifted over to her parents. "And I'm glad I got to talk to you again, Mom, Dad."

"Me too," Akane responded. "I'll try to come and visit you girls sometime soon, okay?"

Shion nodded. "Okay, I'll be looking forward to it! Shion, you can just stay here and talk to Mom and Dad for now. I'm sure they'll shut anyone who tries to say anything bad again up right away." She smiled at her parents, nodding confidently. "Yes, they definitely will. Anyways, I'll talk to you soon. Damn family work…"

Mion watched as her sister reluctantly walked away towards a group of people Oryou was talking to. She remembered a time where she would be the one who would have to do it, and how it would be Shion who got to stay behind and talk to her parents. She never really minded doing it, though. It was all a part of being the head of the Sonozaki family, and anything that was a part of that was something Mion always took seriously. Perhaps that was just because she had been raised knowing that, though.

But wait… this Shion had, too. _I suppose Shion's just a different type of heiress than me, _Mion decided.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After everyone had left, Shion returned to her room, much to Mion's relief. Mion had been in her room for a long while now, waiting for her sister to return. She had gotten bored of the reunion some time ago and had returned to her room. While she had Rion to say a few things to, it seemed the two of them just couldn't start up a conversation for some reason. Maybe Mion just hadn't been in the mood.

"Damn family work," hissed Shion as she plopped down on the futon. "I should have been asleep three hours ago!"

"It's not that bad. I'm still up, after all," Mion replied. "Though talking with all those people was probably a little boring."  
>"A little!" cried Shion. "Just a little? You try being heiress, Shion! It's a lot of work and it's really boring. I hate having to do all that crap, it's stupid and pointless. Besides, being the family head isn't going to be any fun."<p>

Mion shuddered at those first few words. Yes, she had tried being the heiress. She never really liked it too much mostly because of the guilt that plagued her from stealing her sister's rightful position. However, being the heiress forced Mion to act different from who she was. In order to be the head, you had to be cruel and harsh, and Mion certainly wasn't cruel or harsh. Acting that way hurt.

Shion sighed, rolling over onto her side. "Hey, Shion?" she spoke. "Can I tell you a secret?"

Mion blinked, wondering what it could be. "Go ahead," she replied.

"I wish I were you," she sighed out. "I really do, Shion. Even though people say bad things to you like that you're a worthless copy, I don't mind that. I could put up with that! I would rather it be me getting those comments than you. And besides, being the head… I don't want to be the head. I'm not fit for it. I could never be the head. All that leading, all that work… Shion, you could do it. You would make a much better heiress than me. That's something for you, not for me!" she admitted. Her tone was on the edge of becoming a cry, and she sounded a tad broken as she spoke. "I've spent day after day, session after session wishing I wasn't me. I should have been Shion. You should be Mion..."

Those words hit Mion right in the chest, and her eyes grew wide. What was she saying? No! She couldn't be saying that she wished their places were reversed! It was better that they were who they were born as! Shion had her birthright that Mion felt so much guilt from stealing from her, and… Wait… Shion's biggest regret was the tattoo, too, wasn't it? But was it really because she felt bad that she didn't get that position, or was it because she regretted stealing a more laid back life from her sister?

…Mion didn't want to think about that. It made her sick to hear these words from her sister. Not because they were bad, but because it made her want to punch herself in the face. Shion never wanted to be the head. She just wasn't cut out for it. And unlike what Mion thought, she was not happy in her position.

"I wish I were born as you and you as me. It would work so much better. Then, you wouldn't have to put up with all those horrible things that the family said about you! Those words broke you, Shion!" cried Shion. She flipped herself over and looked at her sister straight in the eye, tears beginning to form. "They broke you and tore you to pieces with those awful words! That's why you were so depressed! Because those words… those names they called you… they hurt you so badly." She clenched her fists, looking down at the ground as she tried hard to prevent more tears from falling. "It's there fault that you tried to commit suicide by jumping off that cliff!"

_What?_ What did she just say? No… it wasn't true. Mion told herself that what Shion just said wasn't true. That fall from the cliff in this world… it wasn't really a suicide attempt, was it? No! It was just an accident! But... She thought of what people said in the hospital that day, and how they had been claiming everything was their fault. _Oh… it… makes sense…_ So… it was true, then? She really did… try to….

"I wanted to kill myself when Kasai said he found the suicide note in your room! The only thing I could think of was how I so desperately wanted to be you, because I could have taken those words instead, and how desperately I wanted you to be me! You're not Shion, Shion! You're Mion! And I'm not Mion!"

Mion's head was pounding with each word Shion spoke out, with each time she mentioned how they should have the names they had in her world. Thoughts floated around in her head, and one of the main one was a voice in her head, screaming at her for being so stupid. Who was happier with them having their birth names? No one was happier with it! Why was she so stupid to think that things would be better for Shion to be Mion, and that she would be happier? Shion wasn't the type to be the head! Shion was a good person, but she could never rule Hinamizawa. She just wasn't that person.

But… Mion could. But she could never survive the words that people tossed at her. They broke her too much. They stung at her and ate at her soul, tearing away piece by piece of her very flesh. They even caused her to try to commit suicide in this world! Shion, though, was able to shrug off those thoughts easily! She could endure all those horrible things. She had for years in the world before!

_Yes, _Mion thought, _the twin switch… It happened for a reason._

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Whew. This is the longest chapter in a while. And to think, I wanted it to be short. I suppose it turned out a little differently. Anyways, I realized a little that the whole twin swap thing wasn't playing as big a role as I intended it to in the beginning. But it is important, if you think about this chapter.  
>I like how dark things are getting by the chapter. I like writing this bits.<strong>

**Anyways, I don't have much to say here. I should be going to bed now. It's way too late. The only thing on my mind right now is uploading this fanfiction and the fact that Fate/Zero is back tomorrow. **_**Yes! SABER! **_**I don't know why I love her so much. I just... do. **

**~Crimso**


	28. Chapter 27: Turmoil

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I am going to school tomorrow after a long weekend. MEH. I hate Mondays. At least I only have theater and computer in the morning. That's relaxing, at least. The rest of my day is pretty packed with important classes, though. By the way, my cat sitting next to me has no sense of personal space. That's to be expected, though. He's a cat.**

**Note: I haven't written a note in a while. Hi there. This is a note. We're working towards building up tension right now. Nothing full-blown violent or dark or anything.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Seven: Turmoil _

Mion had to drag herself to school that morning, and on the way, she didn't say a single word to Shion. Usually, they would chat happily together about one thing or another, but today Mion just didn't want to talk. Shion seemed a little quiet too, though she had spoken to her once or twice in hope that it would start up a quick conversation. However, all her attempts failed and she had long ago decided that she would just not say a single word to her.

The silence may or may not have been what Mion really needed. It gave her some time to sort out her thoughts, but they just made her feel worse. All that she could hear was the voice of her sister crying to her, expressing her hidden desire to be her. Why was she so foolish? Why did she think that the swap was something that was better? She was fine with it because she thought that Shion was happier that way. But Shion… Shion couldn't ever play the role of the head. It just wasn't something made for her personality.

She bit her lip. She was practically bashing herself over the head about what had happened, and she wished that she could actually do so physically. However, there was nothing really to bash herself with aside from maybe her bag, but Shion would probably be freaked out by such behavior, and she would prefer not to draw attention to herself right now.

"You should cheer up," Rion told her softly, looking at the girl as she wore a worried expression on her face. "I know it's got you down, but… you should look on the bright side of things."

Mion ignored her. How in the world was she supposed to look on the bright side of thing when she realized she had made a huge mistake and that Shion was probably going to kill her today when Satoshi turned her down in favor of her? She gritted her teeth, clenching her fists tightly as she walked along. Everything was going wrong right now. What was going right? All form of comfort seemed to have disappeared. Keiichi was still there for her… but… she felt like that was going to crash and burn soon. Shion would comfort her, but then again, would she even bother to after she found out about Satoshi's feelings for her? No. She probably wouldn't.

There were her friends, but even that she knew couldn't cheer her up. Her relationship with Satoshi was in ruins right now, something about Rena seemed to make her shudder inside for some odd reason, Rika… well, maybe Rika could cheer her up, but Rika herself hadn't been too cheery as of recently. Satoko may be someone she could talk to, too. Yet, she knew that she couldn't ever release her inner feelings to anyone and tell them about the truth, because there was no way she could explain why she was so upset. "Oh, I traveled to an alternate universe and everything I thought was right and perfect is going wrong!" No! That would never work!

She could express her concerns about Satoshi and Shion as well as her relationship with Keiichi to someone, but to whom exactly? Satoko and Rika were too young and would never understand that sort of thing. Meanwhile, she couldn't tell Shion because she was involved in the whole Satoshi thing and was probably going to abandon her in a little bit, she couldn't tell Rena because there was something odd about her that really threw her off and she was involved in why she was so worried, and Keiichi… Of course not. She could never say anything like that to him.

"I know how you're feeling, Shion," sighed Rion as she walked along next to the girl. "And I'm really sorry that things aren't working out anymore."

_It took weeks to build everything back together and a few days for everything to crumble to pieces _Mion thought bitterly.

"Shion? I don't think that Rena and Keiichi have anything going on between them if that's what you're worried about. I know her transfer was strange and I still don't know why it happened, but I want you to know that I think your relationship with Keiichi is safe. You should hang out with him more, maybe after school today. You two can talk to each other. Maybe that will make you feel better," Rion suggested to her.

Keiichi always did cheer her up in those times, and… well, he wouldn't reject her, would he? Perhaps she could tell him she wasn't feeling all that great but just not explain why. Bringing up the fact that Satoshi kissed her out of nowhere wouldn't be the best idea. He would probably get rather mad at Satoshi for doing that. Mion couldn't blame him, of course. She would probably get very mad if someone like Rena kissed her boyfriend…

Well, whatever the case was, talking to Keiichi would probably pick her right up. That boy just had a way with words and a stunning ability to make people feel better with those words. She had no idea how he was able to do it, and when she asked, he just shook his head and said that those words came to him naturally. Those words were always enough to warm Mion's hard, even in the coldest storms of emotions that hit her. Maybe that was just one of the reasons why she fell in love with him…

"Well, I don't know what you're thinking, but I hope that you've considered the idea," Rion spoke gently to the girl. "And I hope that things get better. I want you to be happy in this world…"

Mion nodded slightly, just so that Rion could see. She understood Rion's feelings, and why she would want her to be happy. She wanted to be happy, too. It was just a little hard to be happy when everything around you that seemed to be right was eroding into a pile of rubble. Just why did everything go wrong?

No, she told herself. She had to be strong and she didn't need to think like that right now. If she walked in with a positive mind, then she would be able to think of everything positively, and she would possibly be able to convince herself that there was nothing wrong going on at all. Satoshi would fall in love with Shion, Keiichi would love her, Rena would begin acting like normal and wouldn't give Mion a hint of danger every time their eyes happened to meet…

Everything would be okay, she told herself. Everything was going to be okay… She just needed to hang in there, even if just by a loose thread.

Neither twin said anything to each other the whole way, and it wasn't until they had both sat down in their sits did Shion talk, though her conversation was not directed towards Mion. Mion was thankful for that; she didn't feel like getting involved in anything right now. Her head was a complete mess. Even if she told herself it would be okay, there was something in the back of her head that was screaming at her, telling her that no matter what she tried to think, and no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, everything was crumbling to pieces.

She slammed her head on the desk and didn't even bother to pick it up as Chie walked in, beginning to speak about the morning announcements. They weren't anything interesting, as Mion discovered after about ten seconds of listening, so she allowed herself to close her eyes and relax. What she really needed right now was to sleep. Even if Chie caught her, then so be it. She didn't care. Perhaps it was all the thinking, but her eyelids were collapsing shut, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"That's right," Rion whispered as she looked down at the girl. "Just sleep a little. After all, that's the most that you can really do right now."

Mion agreed completely with Rion. The only thing she could do was to sleep and relax… and, truth be told, it was the only thing that she really wanted to do at that moment.

_~~~~X~~~~_

"SONOZAKI-CHAN!"

Chie's voice practically shattered her eardrums as soon as her booming voice filled the room, but they were not enough to shatter through Mion's dreams. A part of her had heard it, but another part of her kept her eyes shut and in the dream world. The girl wasn't dreaming about much, but whatever her dream was, her conscious was telling her it was a lot more interesting than the yelling directed towards her.

"Sonozaki-chan! How long have you been asleep for? !" Chie demanded.

Mion barely processed those words, and the only reaction her teacher got was slight stirring before she rested her head in a slightly different, more comfortable position. There was another part of her that was dragging her towards the real word outside, but it appeared that the drowsy side of her was stronger and more determined to keep her with it.

She felt a soft hand on her shoulder that began to shake her, forcing the drowsy side of her to lose its grip and give into the side of her that was screaming at her to wake up in the endless tug-o-war game that was going on between them. Slowly, her emerald eyes opened, and her slightly fuzzy vision instantly detected Chie standing right before her, looking down on her with a disapproving and quite angry look.

"Hello, Chie," replied a groggy Mion, not the least bit intimidated by her teacher's annoyed look.

"Sonozaki-chan, I will ask you this again. Just how long have you been asleep for?" Chie questioned in her stern tone, one that would usually cause a young child to cower under his or her desk in fear. Yet, this sort of tone never seemed to be able to scare Mion all that much. Perhaps she was just too used to it by now.

Mion shrugged. "I fell asleep as soon as I got here…" she replied. After those words left her mouth, her body felt the need to yawn loudly, forcing her eyes shut for a few brief moments. In those moments, she truly did feel like keeping them shut forever.

Chie sighed, shaking her head. "I don't know how I didn't notice you before. I guess I was just too busy with some of the other students." A young boy and a young girl sitting two rows ahead of Mion shrunk behind their desks, an embarrassed looks on their faces. "Anyways, go wash your face off with some water at the faucet outside and come back. I want that math review packet on my desk soon…"

Mion pulled herself out of her seat and began to stretch her whole body out the moment she left the comfort of her chair. Shion was looking at her a little concerned, but Mion didn't think too much of it. Limply and sort of awkwardly, she began to drag herself on over to the outside, to the water faucet.

When she got there, she practically stuffed her face under the water and let it pour all over her head. Perhaps that was really what she needed right now, though she doubted the reason why she needed it had anything to do with the fact that she had just been sleeping or that the final days of August were quite hot. Maybe a good splash of water was just what she needed to clear her head a little.

That sleep had done her some good, though. She could barely remember what she was so worried about as she took another great stretch, enjoying the feeling of her muscles being pulled far apart. It was oddly relaxing to do that. She took a moment to turn back to the faucet before dunking her head under it again, allowing more water to pour out. It felt good before. Perhaps what she needed was more cold water on her head.

When she felt as if her head was heavy, she pulled her head away from the faucet and sat on the ground, shaking her head out before resting it in a sunny spot so that it could dry. Yes, she was taking an awfully long time. Yes, she was stalling. But really, sitting there relaxing in the sun while waiting for her hair to dry was a lot more fun than working on a math review sheet, which she was sure wouldn't be in as soon as Chie wanted it to be.

She took a moment to look at the sky and think about nothing else but it. The clouds were puffy in the sky, and to Mion, they looked just like she could reach up there, pull herself up, and fall fast asleep… The thought made her drowsy, but she shook it away. She had to stay awake. She had had her time to sleep in class. Now, she had to actually appear awake when not doing work.

She burred her head into her hands, bored. She didn't want to go back to class, and she didn't want to look at the clouds and get the idea of sleep. She had to remain awake somehow when she was out here. With that in mind, she decided she would focus her thoughts on something, something that would certainly distract her and give her something to not be bored about as she waited in the sun…

Unfortunately, her mind had only been kind enough to hold off on the dark thoughts up until that moment, it seemed. The first thing that came to mind when she closed her eyes was the feeling of Satoshi's lips pressed against hers as his arms locked onto her back, pulling her as close as he could. Her eyes shot open and she let out a little gasp as she recalled that memory. Why in the world did that just come to her now? She had just managed to hold off that thought!

_I wonder... I wonder if Shion is going to confess today like she said. _Mion did not correct herself when she used Shion's name instead of "Onee." She didn't even want to think about their swapped places anymore. The drama from last night was still fresh in her mind, and the thought of that combined with the thought that Shion may confess to Satoshi, even when he had not yet gotten over his love for her… It was quite a bit.

_Maybe looking at the clouds and falling asleep would be better than thinking about this. _At least then she didn't have to traumatize herself thinking about all these things. The idea of sleeping seemed a lot more peaceful…

She mentally slapped herself in the face. No sleeping, no thinking about how her "perfect" world was almost in ruins. Perhaps she could think about something more entertaining. Like… kittens. Now that was a cute subject, and much more entertaining. When was the last time she had seen a kitten? Oh yes, it had been when she was with Keiichi, though that was more of a cat then a kitten. Well, whatever the age, it was still a member of the same species. That was quite a cute calico cat. She wanted a cat someday, too. Of course, she doubted she would be allowed to keep a pet like that. Besides, she had Azumi for now, who, despite being a plush cat, was enough to make her happy. That plush cat had some nice memories, too. When she and Shion were little, they would always play with Azumi and Ayumi, and they would never share them. Even when they were swapped, they didn't change which cat they played with…

_ARGH!_ Mion was sure that her mind was locked in some kind of endless loop. Even the topic of kittens brought her to thinking about something she was trying to avoid. She was sure that if she thought about potatoes, it would probably draw her to something she was trying to avoid.

Mion banged her head against her knees, burying herself in them. Why was it so hard to keep her mind off of the bad things just for a moment? It was just too much. Everything going around her was just too much for her to take, as well. Why did her mind have to work like this? Couldn't she just have a moment to think of something nice for a moment?

_But I guess things really are going wrong. I can't really think about something else when I know that around me, one thing is going. First, there's something about Rena that throws me off. Second, I lose Shion and Satoshi's chances of being together. Third, I lose the happiness Shion had from being the older twin. What in the world am I going to lose today, then? _She didn't want to lose anything. Perhaps she could deal with Satoshi and Shion with the spark of hope that they may get together, and there was a chance she could just forget about the whole issues with the twin swap. She didn't know what was wrong with Rena, so she could tell herself for now that there was nothing wrong and that she was just being silly if that meant keeping her going. So, if she lost anything else… would that be replaceable?

Mion wanted to cry. She really didn't want to lose anything anymore. The each thing that she could potentially lose in the future became a thorn in her chest as she thought about them, and what she would do if she lost them. Thorns were small, but they pricked. If you were to jam one in your skin, it may startle and hurt. However, if you were to fall into a pit of thorny roses, then that would be too much to take. Each thing she lost hurt more than a single thorn, but thinking about them all together certainly hurt her more.

"Shion…?" a gentle voice spoke.

This was enough to draw Mion's head away from her knees, and she saw herself looking directly into the sapphire eyes of Keiichi. He was wearing a concerned look on his face, clearly worried about the condition his girlfriend currently was. "Are you alright? You left the class some time ago…"

She smiled a tad at the sight of her boyfriend. The sight of him made the pain temporarily disappear, and for a bit, she could think happy and warm thoughts. "Kei-chan…" she whispered to him, her tone filled silent but filled with joy. However, these feelings only lasted a bit before the knife that was the memory of her kissing Satoshi jammed right into her. Her short-lived grin twisted into a frown, and a single tear fell from her eye, followed by more about to pour down.

He looked very surprised, and within seconds, he was crouched down beside her, an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong, Shion?" he asked her in a gentle, soothing tone. "Please tell me."

Mion gritted her teeth. What was she supposed to tell him? That Satoshi kissed her in the forest before? No! She could never say that to him. He wouldn't be very pleased at all, and besides, it wasn't a good idea to be blabbering about Satoshi's secret feelings for her. She certainly couldn't share the whole thing with the twin swap, either. Telling him about Rena may be too hasty, as the whole thing could just be the possibility that she was jumping to conclusions, and she didn't want to seem rude in front of him. That wouldn't give him a good opinion of her.

"I just don't know!" Mion decided to let out. "Everything just seems like it's falling to pieces, and I just don't know what to think! Everything's just so _wrong_!"

As soon as those words were spoke, Keiichi's grip on her became a little tighter. "Is there any reason in particular that you feel like that?" Keiichi asked her.

She shook her head. She couldn't share those things with him, even if he was her boyfriend.

"I see…" Keiichi's arms unraveled from Mion's shoulders, and then his hands found them instead. They twisted her around ever so slightly so that his eyes met hers. Slowly, he gave her a grin. It was just his ordinary grin, but something about that stupid, cheesy grin he always wore had never failed to make her heart leap. Perhaps he had known this, for it worked wonders. Mion felt a little bit of warmth flow into her and melt away some of her worries. His grin just had that ability, didn't it? "You're going to be okay. Nothing is going wrong right now. We have a new friend and we're all getting along nicely. And besides, you can't go wrong when you have a guy like me as a boyfriend!" he joked. It caused her to giggle, though just ever so slightly.

"Come here," he told her.

Those words might have seemed odd to some if anyone else had witnessed it, seeing as she was directly in front of him already, but she knew exactly what those words meant. She moved forward just ever so slightly before she collapsed in the boy's arms, wrapping her arms around his back and pulling her face close to his chest. She allowed herself to relax as his arms held her in a gentle embrace, his chin then resting on top of her head as his hands began to slowly pet her back. She took a few moments to admire the sound of his beating heart, finding the sound oddly calming to her senses. It was as if those sounds were horrifying to her bad thoughts, as they instantly scattered away when she listened to them. It was just a thumping sound, but to Mion, it was enough.

"I love you, Mion," Keiichi told her, "and I never want you to forget that I love you. So whenever you feel down, I want you to remember that I love you, and that those feelings of mine will remain no matter what escapes you. Just as a little something to cheer you up." One hand on her back moved over to her long locks of green hair and began to run through them in an attempt to calm her. "Remember that for me, okay?"

Mion just nodded, and after that, closed her eyes and just listened to his heartbeat and enjoyed the warmth his body was giving her. If it was enough to chase the pain away, then she wanted to remain in that position forever.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Walking home from school, Mion felt a little better. She breathed the fresh air, allowing the taste of it to refresh her senses. Thinking about small things like that really did help chase negative thoughts away. Keiichi's words echoed in her head with each step that she took, and with those, Mion was sure that she could remain strong no matter what the situation was. If she remembered that feeling, then maybe it would be able to melt everything bad away…

Mion thought about this all the way, and even as she fell down onto her futon, she didn't stop thinking about it. She smiled gently as she recalled how nice he had been to her, and how supportive he had been. He always just had a way with words, didn't he? Those words of his could probably flip the most stubborn of frowns upside-down.

She sighed. Today hadn't been too bad yet. Perhaps things would have gone better if it weren't for those thoughts in her head… Well, they were gone now, so there was nothing to worry about at all.

"Keiichi is such a nice boyfriend," Rion commented, "I think he does ten times better of a job than I do when it comes to cheering you up."

"You're still great, Rion," Mion whispered to the goddess.

Rion flustered a bit. "I'm honored! I really am!" she cried out.

Mion let a tiny smile grow on her face before she returned to thinking about other random things. Maybe she could think about what was for dinner tonight. That was something that could keep her distracted. After all, she really did love to eat at times… She shut her eyes, folding her hands on her stomach as she began to visualize food in her head, practically being able to taste the spices and sauces as if her mouth were stuffed full of them.

The screen door opened, and when Mion's eyes opened, she suddenly had a really bad feeling. The image of the food completely died as she stared at her sister, who looked quite shaken, shocked, and sorrowful at the same time.

"Satoshi-kun told me…" she breathed.

That was enough to make Mion's heart slam to the bottom of her stomach, sitting there like an uncomfortable lump.

"…Why?" she rasped out, her voice tattered and broken. "Why does he like you? Even when… even when I've been trying this hard, even when I've loved him so much…" She looked at the ground, clenching her teeth together as she balled her fists. She was trying to hide her tears, but they were much too noticeable, even when her bangs were over her eyes. "Why does he love you and not me, Shion?"

Mion couldn't answer that question.

Shion's eyes drifted up for a moment, met her sister's gaze, and then grew wide. "I…" That was the only word she managed to stutter out before she whipped around and ran away into the hallway, her heavy footsteps pattering and echoing throughout the hall.

Mion opened her mouth, wanting to say something, wanting to do something. She had to go out and say something! But what was she going to say? What was she going to do?

Once again, she was at a loss for words.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**We've needed a chapter this short for a while, and a chapter on Monday for a while, too. Then again, by the time you are reading this, it is probably Tuesday. I hate Mondays. Tuesdays are bad, too. I like Wednesdays, though. Speaking of which, we have our Science Fair on Wednesday! It goes on for about an hour, and then we get let out at eleven thirty-five and get to go home early. I don't know if I will write in that extra time, but I do hope to. I also have a bunch of history make up work to do.**

**I realized that I never say much here any more. Er… should I say something? Well, nothing happened today. Mirai Nikki twenty-five was pretty awesome. School was boring. Yeah, same old, same old. I guess I just haven't had anything to tell you all recently. Oh, it's a day later, and my cat still has no sense of personal space! That's not surprising or interesting, though. Oh, cats...**

**~Crimso**


	29. Chapter 28: Dying Hope

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**(Note: Chapter was started Saturday)**

**Eee. Um… What is there to say here? I'll talk about current events in my life, then. Forth Quarter has started. Nothing really interesting is going on. I can't wait for summer. Today's Fate/Zero was so awesome I felt like exploding (also, Saber). Mirai Nikki ends tomorrow (but probably won't be subbed until Monday). That just about covers it…**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Eight: Dying Hope_

The morning came much too slowly in Mion's opinion. The night seemed to have drifted on forever, with her lying with her eyes wide open, not even able to close them. Whenever she tried, she would find them flying right open at the speed of a rocket exiting the earth. Even before she went to bed, things weren't very comfortable for her. She would usually conclude the night with a friendly chat with Shion about one thing or another, but neither of them spoke to each other for the rest of the day after the incident with Satoshi. They exchanged glances every now and then, but those glances only lasted two seconds long at most. Mion wanted to talk to her, but there just wasn't anything to say after that incident.

She had thought all night about their relationship, or at least what remained of it. Neither of them were talking now. She didn't know how long it would last, but judging by the situation, probably a while. She did not want to speak to her sister at all, and she knew that if they did get into a conversation, it would not be her starting it. Unless Shion had something to say, Mion knew that they probably wouldn't exchange words for a long, long time…

She sighed as she looked at herself in the mirror, brushing a comb through her long strands of green hair. All she could think about was Shion, and how that morning she had just gotten right up without a word and walked out of the door, not even bothering to greet her sister or ask her how her sleep was. They didn't even look at each other.

Mion had skipped breakfast that day, for some reason not having an appetite. She was now completely dressed and ready to go, but it was quite early. She looked at the clock. Maybe getting there early wouldn't be so bad, now that she thought about it. Someone could be there and she could probably stir up a small conversation with them, getting her mind off of things. She usually waited for Shion to get ready to go with her, but… It wasn't like they were going to say anything to each other anyways, and being near Shion was now awkward and uncomfortable. Where there was once a warm fire laid ashes of that same fire, doomed to never ignite and give off warmth again. The ashes had long lost their heat from the burning fire it had once been. Now, it was just cold, black dust. That same warmth she got from being near Shion was just that now. All there was cold, awkward remains of what would never come back.

She wanted to piece things back together, but ash was not broken pottery. If you really wanted to put in the time and effort, pottery's pieces could be put together again, though it would take a long time and careful judgment to fit each piece back together so that the vase was complete. Perhaps there would be a few slight changes, but only someone with a careful eye could see them. Ash was not something that could be pieced together to form a warm fire. Ashes were nothing more than remains, not something that could ever become anything.

Perhaps their now broken relationship would prove to be something more than just ashes that could actually be put together, but Mion doubted it. She would never have the strength to say something for a while. Perhaps one day Shion would speak to her again and they could move on, but that might as well be in the far, far future.

_I've lost everything. I thought that I had created a perfect world… but... maybe something that perfect just doesn't exist. _When she was little, everyone would constantly remind her that no one and nothing was perfect. It was a saying that went around, though sometimes Mion had doubted it. What wasn't perfect about those beautiful art pieces that hung around the Sonozaki Manor? There were no flaws. However, now that Mion thought about it, it was true. Nothing could ever be perfect, and that also had to go for this world.

"It doesn't have to be that way," Rion told Mion, "there's a chance that it can come back. I think you are being a bit too negative," she pointed out. "If you look on the bright side, you'll see that your relationship isn't gone forever! Mion loves you, and you love Mion. Could this really tear you apart?"

Mion looked down at the ground. "I do love Shion, and she loves me, but Satoshi means more to her than anything else in the whole world. Since she lost him to me, I don't think there's much of a chance of anything good coming out of this, or her deciding that she will just forgive me." She turned around, looking Rion right in the eye. "You told me once that you had a sister. Don't you know what it's like?"

Rion blinked a few times. "Well, my relationship with my sister was a lot different from yours and Mion's," she said, a troubled expression on her face for a few moments. It seemed kind of… dark to Mion, which caused her to blink in surprise. It took her a little while to wipe that look off her face and replace it with her more usual cheerful, childish smile. "But I know enough about your relationship with Mion to know that this can't end it! You two have been together since forever! Nothing ever could change that."

"Well," mumbled Mion, "if you spent three seconds as her sister, you would know her and exactly what she is like. In those three seconds, I'm sure you would realize that Satoshi means everything to her. It's been that way for a long time, and since she's known him for longer in this world, I'm sure her feelings are stronger." She didn't know exactly when Shion's crush on Satoshi developed in this world, but it probably had more time to do so. "It's not something that can be fixed like how you're saying it is. You're making things seem too easy…"

Rion looked at the ground, staring at her feet. She didn't know what to say to that. "Please, just be positive…" she replied desperately.

Mion looked over to Rion. She didn't really want to talk to her about this right now, it was hurting her too much. She just went back to looking at herself in the mirror, deciding that it would be best to get going soon. Well, perhaps if she wanted to try mending their relationship, she could start out by at least waiting to her to show that it wasn't doomed. Maybe that would do something. So instead of leaving like she originally planned, she flopped backwards onto the futon.

Her heart felt like a lump of coal that had yet to be heated. It was heavy, and it had a strange chilliness to it that seemed to affect her entire body and cause every last drop inside of her to freeze over. _I need to get my mind off of things. _She pictured in her head Keiichi, and the events of yesterday before everything went wrong. She remembered how Keiichi had held her in those moments, and how he had told her how much he loved her and that she needed to stay strong.

"_I love you, Mion," Keiichi told her, "and I never want you to forget that I love you. So whenever you feel down, I want you to remember that I love you, and that those feelings of mine will remain no matter what escapes you. Just as a little something to cheer you up." One hand on her back moved over to her long locks of green hair and began to run through them in an attempt to calm her. "Remember that for me, okay?"_

_Yes, I'll remember that. I'm remembering that…_ As she thought about those words, her coal heart began to heat a little and seemed to grow lighter. If she just focused on those words for long enough, the warmth would surely surge throughout her body and melt everything that had turned to ice. Those words made Mion's stomach tingle in delight, and a small smile went across her face. Yes, even in these dark times, she still had Keiichi, who had long ago told her that he loved her. Not only that, but he had promised that that love he had for her would never fly away and go off, and that it was something that he would always hold, and something for her to always hold next to her.

Just the thought of him made her a little happier. With that thought, she could enjoy things in her life. She could know that even though everything was crumbling apart, there was always something that was solid and unbreakable, something that could never be broken into pieces no matter how many times you tried to hit it.

When Shion walked into the room, none of them said anything to each other as usual. Shion quickly got dressed and ready for school as Mion tried to focus her mind on Keiichi and the words he had said to her before. Yes, she didn't need to focus on the bad things in her life. All she needed to focus on was what was good in her life, and perhaps with that she could make it by. After all, her relationship with Shion couldn't be broken forever, could it? Not even the tattoo incident in her world broke them apart. Sure, it shook them up, but Mion and Shion's relationship was anything but fragile. A little shaking wouldn't break it.

"We're going to be late," Shion told Mion, but her voice did not contain very much of it's usual cheerfulness or friendliness. "Let's go to school."

Mion just swallowed and nodded, telling herself that she shouldn't take note of the tone that Shion just spoke in. She had to think about something else and tell herself that that tone was just something temporary. Surely enough, in a week's time, or perhaps two, she would be back to her normal voice, which would be full of her sweetness and love. She could practically see it in her head… Yes, this Satoshi thing wasn't going to last forever. Besides, he could move on.

The two of them left the building, but as Mion had expected, they did not speak a single word to each other as they walked down the paths of Hinamizawa. Well, that was okay. It wouldn't heal instantly. She pictured Keiichi in her head as encouragement to move forward, allowing his words to echo in her mind over and over again. Yes, she just had to focus on what was good in her life right now. Rion was right, these things she was getting hurt about were not things that would stick.

Yet, when she had thought that, a wave of pain hit her heart. She quickly shook it off as nothing, though, and tried to walk forward. Maybe today's day at school would be good. Her friends could be in a good mood, and then they could joke around and discuss any random topic that came up. Having random conversations with her friends was enough to patch up any wounds. Even though they were sometimes pointless and had no meaning, they were just plain fun. Really, she was so glad to have friends like them during these rough days.

When she walked into school, things seemed rather silent, which provided absolutely no comfort for Mion. As she entered the classroom, she spent a moment just standing in the doorway and allowed herself a moment to look around. The younger kids were chatting a bit as usual, but there really wasn't too much conversation going on. Then again, the children in her class sometimes just didn't have chatty days, and it was possible this was one of them. She focused on the back, to where Shion was going. Rena and Keiichi were striking up a conversation, and they both seemed to be perfectly happy. This should have calmed the storm of a turmoil growing in her heart, but for some reason, it was oddly unsettling. The next thing that caught her eye was Rika, who seemed rather dark and down as she ran her finger across the smooth top of her desk, not even bothering to talk to anyone who went up with hopes to speak with her, such as the very eager boy who was trying to encourage her to help him with his art project. The last thing that Mion noticed was the strange absence of both Satoshi and Satoko. She felt worried for a moment, but she shook that off. They were just late, she figured.

Sighing, she entered the classroom and slammed her bag down on the desk. She didn't feel like talking to Shion still, so she found herself moving over towards Keiichi and Rena to join in on their conversation. She didn't know what they were discussing, but it didn't matter. Just something would cheer her up, she supposed. Besides, maybe some conversation with Rena would make her feel a little less off about the girl.

"Hello, Shi-chan!" Rena greeted, smiling. "It's been a little while since we talked. Are you feeling okay?"

_No, _her mind instantly answered. "Yes," she lied. "I just haven't been interacting too much with people, I suppose! You know, I've been working hard on that math packet that Chie gave to me centuries ago."

Rena blinked in surprise. "Keiichi-kun was telling me before that you didn't like math too much, but it's good that you're trying your hardest!" she said cheerfully, switching her expression to a more friendly, happy one rather than confused. "I'm not the best at math either. Keiichi-kun was telling me about how he wanted to help me some more with it." She turned her head over to the boy on her left, smiling. "Right?"

Keiichi nodded. "Rena's a really good listener! She really understands something when I explain it to her. I suppose that the book doesn't explain it well enough, huh?" he said, grinning.

Rena nodded. "Whoever wrote those should have overlooked them to make sure that they made sense. I'm sure you agree with me, Shi-chan. Aren't those descriptions in the book a little confusing?" she asked, focusing her blue gaze on Mion and smiling, much like how the Rena from the older world would smile.

Mion didn't know what to say to that. In truth, she didn't even look at the explanations on the book. She really couldn't be bothered, as she knew that even if she did, they wouldn't make any more sense. "Aha!" Mion finally cried. "Yes, that book isn't that good at all! I mean, who wrote those instructions anyways? They should be fired!"

"Maybe not fired, but certainly told to make things more clear," Rena responding, smiling. "I don't think I would want to make someone lose their job over it. Besides, Keiichi-kun here fixes everything by being such a great teacher!"

Keiichi wore his usual nervous grin. "Well, I don't know if you could say _that_—"

"—Oh, Keiichi-kun! You don't need to be so bashful about your talents." She took a good moment to show her bright smile to the boy before she directed another one at Mion. "You know it too, I'm sure! Keiichi-kun told me about how he had to teach you several problems in math. I don't blame you! I had trouble with the same things! I really don't get math sometimes, but it's a skill that I need to learn, so I'm going to work my hardest! You should, too."

"Yes, of course." For some reason, Mion was still unsettled by this conversation. Every time that Rena said something complimenting Keiichi, and whenever Keiichi complimented Rena, she would feel an uneasy shudder down her spine. She tried her best to ignore it, though, telling herself that it was nothing and that her body was just being silly and giving her warnings that didn't even matter. They probably had no meaning at all. _Yeah, stupid self! Stop doing that and ruining my time. I love Rena, she's a great friend and she has always been very supportive of me. Why are you trying to make me hate her?_

"So," Mion said, feeling the need to switch the subject, "Satoko and Satoshi are late today."

Keiichi nodded. "It's not like that to happen. You know, Satoko's been recently coming her quite early in order to set up traps, so I would think that she would be here already." He began to carefully scan the classroom, and as he did so, he spoke, "unless she is here already and is hiding for some elaborate trap that involves scaring someone half to death."

"If that were true, you would think that Satoshi wouldn't be in hiding. I don't think he's the type to help out on Satoko's pranks," Mion pointed out.

"Yeah, maybe." Keiichi leaned back in his chair, sighing. "But it's probably not anything, I don't think we should get very nervous or worried about it. Do you remember the time when Rena first came, and how Chie was very late? That turned out to be something good, and it was nothing to be worried about at all." He grinned. "Besides, who knows! You and I both know Satoko well, and I'm sure Rena does too even though she hasn't been here for nearly as long. Satoko may be coming in late for some kind of prank…"

Rena scratched her head. "I wonder what kind of prank involves coming in late, I wonder…"

"Maybe she'll burst in in the middle of class and start singing at the top of her lungs and scare us all?" suggested Keiichi.

Rena couldn't help but let out a small giggle. "Oh, Keiichi-kun…"

Keiichi frowned. "What? ! It was a valid idea!" he cried.

Mion just laughed along with her. No, that was not something Satoko would do. Even though she was a prankster, the last thing she would do was _that._ "Anyways, I think that what is more likely would be something involving setting off a smoke bomb in the middle of class or something like that."

"She could do that without coming in late," Keiichi pointed out, "she couldn't do my idea without coming in late."

"Yeah, but your idea was ridiculous," Mion said teasingly, sticking her tongue out at him in order to mock him.

Keiichi grumbled as he placed his chin on his folded arms, whispering something about how he thought his idea was a good one.

"Anyway, class is just about to start," Rena said, looking to the clock. "It's not going to be long until Chie begins class. Satoko and Satoshi will have to hurry up, since Chie doesn't take too well to people being late. I've only been here a few days, and I already know that!" she said, laughing just a little bit at her comment. A few days ago there had been an incident where a boy walked in an hour late, only to meet Chie's fury. That certainly was enough to give Rena an impression, and Mion was sure now that she would probably never be late for class after seeing that display.

"By the way," Rena whispered to Mion, leaning in close to her ear. "Why is Rika-chan acting like that today? She hasn't interacted with anyone. I greeted her this morning, but she only waved a little bit at me. Usually, she starts up some sort of long conversation about her toys at home and how Mr. Cat hasn't been getting along with Mr. Walrus or something along those lines. She seems to be pretty down…"

Mion could only shake her head. Really, why was Rika acting the way she was? It was just plain odd for the Rika of this world. This behavior was definitely a sign that something pretty odd was going on with her. But what could it be? She didn't have the slightest clue as to what the answer to that could be.

She took a moment to watch Rika. The girl was tapping her fingers up and down on the desk as she looked at the wall, though she probably was more focused on whatever was in her thoughts than the work that had been hung up on the wall. There was a slightly dark look in her purple eyes that Mion had only seen during the harsh times in her own world. She didn't even acknowledge a boy as he passed by her, happily greeting her before moving on to get whatever he needed from the drawers near by.

That was unlike Rika, who would usually respond cheerfully to anyone who walked by her, and more often than that was the first to greet anyone who walked by, whether or not she was good friends with the person (though it should be noted that as the Furude Head, Rika knew people in Hinamizawa better than most).

"I don't know, I would think that she would be cheerful…" Mion could only respond. "You've only been here for a bit, and I know you know just from that that she doesn't act like this usually…"

Rena nodded. "It certainly is strange. I wonder why, then? I wonder."

Before Mion could answer to that question, the door opened, revealing Chie. Mion glanced to the clock, realizing that it was indeed time for class. When Chie's body left the doorframe, Mion took a moment to peer into the hallway, a spark of hope lighting within her as she imagined Satoko and Satoshi and the possibility of the two of them being right behind her. Perhaps they had just been discussing grades with her or something similar. However, as quickly as the spark was lit, a particularly ice-cold downpour put it out. There was no one behind her, and certainly no Satoko or Satoshi.

"Okay, class, let's get started!" cried Chie happily as she stood in front of the classroom. "Today, we'll start with announcements…"

However, Mion was not listening. Her mind focused completely the image of Satoko and Satoshi, wondering where they were, wondering if they were okay. Had something bad happened to them? Knowing that Satoshi had gone through a dark period because of her rejecting him made Mion wonder if him not showing up had something to do with what she had said, and what she had done. …No, she told herself. That was ridiculous! There was no way that that had anything to do with this! She mentally slapped herself, telling herself strictly that she could not think like that, or even about that incident anymore. It didn't matter anymore... He would get over her, and then Satoshi and Shion could be together, and then maybe, just maybe she could speak to Shion again.

However, the moment her mind got away from that topic, it decided to drift towards another. An image of Rika popped up in her head, though this Rika was not the cheerful Rika that she had seen during her months in this world. She was depressed, dark, and very distant.

Mion looked down at the wood that made up the top of her desk, burying her fingernails into the rough material, though she couldn't really dig very deep in the first place. What in the world was going on here? Why was Rika acting like this suddenly? She didn't hear of anything bad happening to the Furude family recently, which would be the one reason Mion would think that she would be upset. Then, why?

The next question that came to her mind was why her mind was constantly drifting towards one bad thought. Was it caught in water current or something? …No… Water currents only went in one direction, and they didn't suddenly change directions. Well, whatever it may be that her mind was caught in, it certainly wasn't making things easy for her. When a bad thought was chased out, another would appear.

_Yes. This is just some sort of dark, endless loop…_

_~~~~X~~~~_

Satoshi and Satoko didn't turn up for the rest of class, and Rika's mood never improved. When Mion went home, she and Shion didn't even talk to each other once. Throughout her time at home, they didn't even look into each other's eyes. That's exactly why Mion found herself wandering through the paths of Hinamizawa again, the rays of the golden sunset beaming down on her. However, the bright, sunny sky above her wasn't reflective of her inner emotions. Within her, it was as if the worst snowstorm known to mankind had swept through her heart, freezing it into pieces and destroying any source of warmth or happiness.

There was the empty sound of crunching beneath her feet as her shoes pushed pebbles into the dirt path, and the songs of the higurashi cicadas echoing throughout. However, the songs they sung today did not seem to be all that peaceful, and their rhythm certainly couldn't warm up Mion's mood.

Mion looked up at the sky, trying to focus on the colors above her. Pink, orange, yellow, and purple-blue danced about above, all four colors blazing through the sky. They were warm colors, something that Mion liked. Anything warm was of some comfort to her, but the amount was minimal.

"I want you to stay strong," Rion said, "this _is_ the perfect world!"

Mion doubted it.

Maybe she should go home. The sunset today was beautiful, but all she could think about was how Satoshi's hands had grasped her shoulders that day, and how his lips had pressed forcefully against hers. She remembered how she struggled against him, how she pushed him away, how she broke his heart with her words. This was only making things worse. She couldn't look up at that sky anymore, for every time she did, the feeling of Satoshi's lips tingled against her own lips.

Yeah, that was it. She should go home right now and look forward, not at the sky. She turned around swiftly and marched back in the other direction, trying to focus on the path rather than the sky. She looked from house to house, trying to distract herself with them, attempting to find _something _remotely interesting so to drive off any bad thoughts she had. However, she had seen the village of Hinamizawa too many times for anything around her to be considered that interesting.

And when she tried to warm herself with Keiichi's words, the effect wasn't as strong as before. The warm flames of love only tickled her cold worry and depression, melting off icicles but not chunks. Yes, she loved Keiichi, and Keiichi loved her. That was something she could think about, because it seemed to be the only thing that was actually going right in her life.

_Maybe I should go home and rest. Maybe then I'll have a sweet dream, and then… I can escape my thoughts for a bit._

That sounded like a good idea. When she got home, she would rest. She did need the rest, after all.

However, as she walked forwards towards her house, a thought popped into her mind. This was the image of Shion, staring at her with clear pain in her emerald green eyes. There was this way she held her body that told Mion that she was not being the confident, strong girl she usually was. Her body position made it look as if she had a fifty-pound bag strapped to her back, weighing her down and forcing her to drag herself. Mion bit her lip and shook her head. No, that wasn't Shion. She was just having weird images.

The crunching sound of footsteps grew louder.

The next image that came to her mind was of Rika, her usually happy eyes full of dull loss, as if she were some kind of lifeless doll. She too was just hanging there, her arms held flatly at her sides, swaying about. Mion shook that image out too. No, she couldn't think about that!

Crunch, crunch. The sound of feet hitting the rocks became more rapid.

Then, finally, there was the image of Satoshi sitting in a chair near his desk, his whole body slouching over. His eyes were directed at the floor, but if a close look showed one of his purple eyes. They seemed to be full of suffering of unimaginable amounts, suffering so strong that it made Mion's heart crumble and twist with the sheer idea of it. Surely, her mind told her, she knew why he had those feelings, why that pain was killing him on the inside. Surely, it was because of _her…_

No, no, no, no! Pebbles and dirt were kicked up behind Mion as she dashed. Come to think of it, when had she started running? Oh, that was the reason why the crunching sound became louder and more rapid, wasn't it? Then how long had she been running for, and what was she running from?

_Home! I need to go home!_

_Yes,_ a voice in her head taunted her, _home, where Shion will refuse to look at you, where your dear sister will not utter a single little "hello" to you…_

_Shut up!_ she commanded the voice as she ran faster. No, Shion would greet her! Yes she would. This wasn't something permanent. It wasn't like their relationship was gone. It was just something brief, something that would pass over faster than a flash of lightning.

_Don't feed yourself lies!_ it shouted, _are you trying to deny it, Sonozaki Mion? Or should I say, Sonozaki Shion? Such an unfitting name… you should have been born Mion. _

_ No! I can't think about that! No, no, no…!_

The next thing that Mion knew, she had collided with someone in the middle of the road. She stumbled backwards, her mind and the voice inside her halting the battle and the bad memories temporally fleeing in fright of how sudden the incident was. Mion reached for her stomach, rubbing it gently. What had she crashed into?

"Ah… Satoko!" Mion cried out.

When she looked to the ground, she saw Satoko there, rubbing her head as she sat a little awkwardly on the ground. Slowly, she reached forward for the small, golden coins that had spilled out when they had collided. She collected them and stuffed them in her pockets, and then looked to her sides. The groceries she had bought had spilled out on the ground, some vegetables now coated in the dirt below.

"Ah!" Mion cried out. "I'm sorry about that! Here, let me help you—"

"—No, I'm fine…" Satoko responded, though her voice was not full of her usual Satoko spirit. It was raspy, weak, and tattered with pain. When Satoko looked up to her friend, Mion instantly realized that her cheerful purple eyes had been glossed over with a sheet of suffering and pain, so much that Mion felt as if it had turned into a blade and stabbed her directly in the heart, seeping out unbearable pain, but not blood.

Mion had seen that look in her eye before. but it had been so long ago. And she only had that look when… "Satoko, what's wrong? !" Mion cried out.

Satoko tried smiling at Mion, but her eyes remained without a single happy emotion. "Oh, I just bumped into you. And I spilled the vegetables, silly me… Now aunt's going to get all mad that I ruined dinner…" she spoke. It was odd to hear her little voice tattered with so much pain, even when she was trying to hide it. But Satoko… she just made it too obvious…

She bent over and collected the dirty vegetables in the bag, then lifting them up in her hands. They looked heavy, and Mion doubted that she could carry all that without falling over.

"Here, let me help you," Mion said, reaching forward to take one of the bags from the girl.

"Don't," Satoko responded, jerking the bag backwards and causing the contents to swing. "I'm fine, I'm good… I can carry this all by myself. So, you don't need to worry…" Her voice was dull and not at all reassuring. "I can do everything on my own…"

She began to walk forwards, and when she passed the older girl, Mion noticed that there were bruises near the endings of her sleeves that seemed to extend further, perhaps to her shoulders. This caused her to cringe up in pain, and her teeth to clench together so tightly that they felt like they were about to shatter.

This was exactly how she had behaved when her uncle and aunt were treating her badly years before. All that had lead to the incident with Satoshi disappearing, but… that was her regret. She regretted not being strong. So why was this happening suddenly? Was everything breaking to pieces before her eyes?

"Satoko!" she yelled out to the girl, pure desperation in her voice. "If your aunt and uncle are doing something bad to you, tell me!"

However, Satoko just slowly turned around, looking at Mion again with those dull, purple eyes painted by countless incidents of abuse. "They are not. I am perfectly happy… They are good caretakers. I just happened to get those bruises when I fell from a tree…"  
><em>What a terrible lie…<em> Mion thought. "Don't lie to me, Satoko!" she demanded.

Satoko giggled a little, but it was clearly faked, as there was no joyfulness in her laugh. "I'm not lying. Huh, are you calling me a liar, Shion-san? Hehe… well, I'm not. So don't worry about me. I just didn't come to school today because I had a cold…"

Another terrible lie. Her uncle had told her to say that, probably.

"Well, see you," Satoko said.

Mion's heart would have probably froze, but it already was iced over far too much to gain more. While her uncle and aunt were horribly abusive, the Satoko of this world had been able to put up with them. She would take their beatings, and she would yell back. She would stand up to them, and she would not let them hurt her. She would protect herself without a problem. But now… suddenly…

In the jumble of her thoughts, there was only one clear thing that she could here her mind speak to her.

What in the world was going on here?

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**My computer broke. That's why I didn't update this week. I have no idea how it broke, but the RAM got dislodged somehow (maybe it's because I spilled some drink on my keyboard? That could have caused water damage, not dislocation, but… whatever) which caused my computer to go gray and start beeping. So I had it taken in, and I just got it back. I got really frustrated at them for not fixing it faster. Oh yeah, and it broke IN THE MIDDLE of this chapter :/. Argh. So that's why I didn't update.**

_**This will never happen again.**_

**So I didn't do too well this quarter. Yes, we got our grades today. Whatever, I'll do better next quarter, I'm sure! Yes, I'm going to try my best this time! Gee, I was in a pretty awful mood all day, but at least I'm feeling a lot better now. Let's not talk about these things, I'm happy now. Let's leave it at that!**

**Thank you for waiting, everyone.**

**~Crimso**


	30. Chapter 29: Shattering

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I'm not going to say anything here. Please check Crimso's Corner for information on my updating and such. Thank you.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Twenty-Nine: Shattering_

Hope. What an empty word. Once a few days ago, Mion had hope in her heart. She could feel it coursing through her veins, filling her very soul. Now, the word hope was simply a dead word, the remains of what never will be and what was never to exist again. There was no more hope anymore, and this was something Mion knew. She had tried to hang on for the last days, tried to move on and tell herself that things were going to get better, no matter how bleak and dark the situation seemed.

But as the image of Satoko's dull, pained eyes filled Mion's head, she knew that everything was now just useless. There was no point in telling herself that there was a chance things would get better, that there was a chance that things would go back to how they were when she had declared the world to be perfect. No… she would just be lying to herself if she were to say that, and the last thing she wanted to do now was lie to herself. It just made everything hurt more.

Rion looked at her feet, shifting about. She didn't say a word, probably recognizing that any words she were to say would be useless. That's how Mion took her body movements, anyways. Right now, she was in class, her face pointed at the wooden top that made up her desk. Her fingers scratched the surface just barely, though the gesture was for nothing at all. Her body was slumped over, the position it was in not matter to the girl right now. She didn't care what she looked like, and she didn't care what anyone was doing. She imprisoned in the dark thoughts in her head, doomed to never escape.

It had actually been a few days since she had run into Satoko, and in each of those days that had passed over, Satoko and Satoshi were again absent from school. The only words Shion spoke to her were things like "turn off the lights" or "let's go to school, we're going to be late." Any other conversation didn't exist, and the thought of it was just distant to Mion. Rika would spend each day depressed, she too refusing to say a word to anyone. Rena and Keiichi were attempting to stay strong in the situation by chatting with each other, but while Mion wanted Shion and Rika to talk to her, she found herself thinking that it would be better if Rena and Keiichi were just like Shion and Rika. Why she thought that was beyond her, but she didn't want to think of the reason why now. Whatever she thought was fine with her, and diving any deeper would hurt her head.

Class had actually started a little while ago, but no part of Mion wanted to do math right now, or any other subject for that matter. Rika was much the same, just staring at a lump of clay in front of her, her fists clenched into tight orbs. Shion, however, was focused on her math, something rare for her. Perhaps there was just nothing to distract her. Rena and Keiichi were helping each other with their works, pointing out whenever the other made a mistake or asking whenever they needed help. They were really the only ones talking.

The two seats that usually belonged to Satoko and Satoshi were completely empty, giving off an ominous and unpleasant feeling. They made the whole place seem completely deserted.

Mion bit her lip. Screw math, now wasn't the time at all to worry about it. If Chie saw her, then so be it. She would just go "get a drink of water" and spend the rest of the day there if that were to happen. Chie didn't seem to be all that focused on the older girl anyways, she was paying more attention to Rika. She was standing in front of her desk, a worried expression painted her face as she tried to talk to the girl, who did nothing more than look melancholically at the desk.

"Furude-san, I'm just wondering if you know any way to save Houjou-kun and Houjou-san… I know we tried that already, but there has to be another way I can help you and them," Chie was saying to the blue-haired girl.

"Whatever you do is helpless," mumbled Rika.

Yes, indeed whatever she did was helpless. There was no way she could think of to chase that dreaded uncle and aunt away. How in the world was she supposed to save Satoko? There was no point in trying anyways. All hope had run away, and there was nothing to come of trying to save her. It would just end in bitter defeat.

Shion was looking up from her sheet and at Chie and Rika, a worried expression also on her face. Surely she was thinking of Satoshi, and how he was probably now in his house, putting up with his uncle and aunt. He had been fine before… and so had Satoko. So why now? Why did it have to be now that they completely broke down and lost to their uncle and aunt, completely dropping their ability to withstand those two horrible monsters and the pain that they inflicted?

_I thought that this was a regretless world, _Mion thought to herself.

…But was it even regretless in the first place?

Mion thought that over. Keiichi had the toy gun incident, and she had come to the conclusion that he had a deeper regret hiding somewhere. However, that could easily be false. Maybe his regret just wasn't cleared. And what about Rena? She came because of her parent's divorce, and Mion knew that a divorce didn't just take a few days, and she had already been here for two months. What if something had already existed when she had come to the world? Then Rena's regret was still there. And Satoko… she could have easily been breaking. The regret about the tattoo disappearing brought on a whole knew regret, and Satoshi's appearance was causing her more trouble than his disappearance.

She was a fool to think that this world had ever been perfect.

"Hang in there for me," Rion whispered to the girl. "Just hang in there a little longer. It's not the end…"

"Yet," Mion added on.

Rion stayed silent after that, fading away into the air without another word after slowly shaking her head.

And so Mion sat there the whole time, hanging her head and looking down at the wood as she thought. She remained hat way until lunchtime rolled around, when she pushed her desk against Rena and Keiichi's along with the rest of the group. Despite the fact that half of the friends weren't going to say anything and another part was completely missing, Mion still felt the need to sit with the rest of her friends.

It was just about the most boring lunchtime she had ever had. Barely anyone said anything, not even Rena and Keiichi. They seemed to be looking for the opportunity to say something, but it never seemed to come, no matter how many minutes flew by. Rika didn't even look like she was about to try to start up a conversation; she just stirred her rice with her chopsticks. Shion was staring at the pictures that were hung up on the walls that children had drawn for art class, including a smiling picture of Mr. Cat that Rika had put all her heart into. Mion wondered if the Rika now would even bother to make a picture like that, or if she even could.

It was about halfway through the period when someone finally decided to speak up.

"Rika," Keiichi's voice started softly, "what's going on with Satoko and Satoshi? Is it their aunt and uncle?"

Rena looked at Keiichi, a little solemn. "I've only been here for a little while, but their aunt and uncle don't seem like nice people. I ran into Satoko the other day at the store, and she was covered in bruises… I'd think she just tripped or something, but judging by what people have been saying about their uncle and aunt…"

Keiichi nodded. "I'd think the same thing." He glanced over to Rika again. "Can you tell us if that's the case, Rika?"

Rika just nodded slowly.

Horror filled Keiichi's face. "No, but she's always been good about defending herself. Why now?"

"I don't know," Rika said darkly, "but there is nothing we can do about it."

"There has to be something!" Keiichi shouted out in alarm. "I mean, can't we contact the child services or something?"

"Chie-sensei tried that," replied Rika, her voice dull and without it's usual cute cheer. "She said that—"

The door to the classroom was pulled open, causing everyone in the classroom to look towards the door. Much to Mion and everyone else's surprise, it was Satoshi and Satoko. Confusion filled Mion's brain as she tried to figure out why they would be there, why they would walk in in the middle of the day when they hadn't been there for days because of their aunt and uncle.

Mion couldn't get too good of a look from where she was, but their condition certainly didn't seem good…

Chie shot up from her desk. "You two!" she cried out, moving towards the two siblings. "I came to your house the other day, but your uncle and aunt wouldn't let me in. Have things been okay?"

"Yes," said Satoko, "I just had a bit of a cold. And so did my brother. These bruises are from when I happened to fall down a tree… We are sorry."

It was the same exact excuse that she had given Mion a few days ago, and that was enough for Mion to know that she had probably been told to say that by her uncle and aunt, who had probably used a very strict and harsh voice and threatened to hurt her if she didn't.

Chie didn't look convinced, but Satoko excused herself and grabbed her desk, pushing it with the others. She did the best she could to smile through her bruised and beaten face, though the swollen cheek didn't really give much of a happy effect, and neither did the chipped tooth that Mion could just make out through her slightly opened mouth.

"Now, which one of you called the child protection services?" sighed Satoko, trying her best to put on her usual voice. "It's not my uncle and aunt, I told you I just got a cold and fell out of a tree. Gee, they caused quite a disturbance. It took forever for us to send them off…"

The blood boiled in Mion's veins. She just told the child protection services to go away when they were called? What in the world did she think she was doing?

_ Don't be mad, there was no point anyways. Nothing would have changed… _Mion told herself, causing the heat of anger to be turned down just the slightest bit. Really, there hadn't been much of a choice before. The child protection services never did much to help Satoko back in her own world.

Satoshi slowly sat down, and when he did, Shion shot him the most worried look Mion had ever seen. There were bruises lining his arms and a very noticeable gash that had just began to heal on his forehead. Combined with the fact that his eyes were full of exhaustion, he looked a tad more beaten than Satoko even. "Hello," he spoke in his regular voice, though to Mion it sounded a little forced. "We're sorry about what happened. I'll explain a little later…"

"Satoshi-kun…" whispered Shion, "what in the world have they been doing to you?"  
>"Nothing to me," he replied. "I said we would talk about this later."<p>

Shion looked down at her bento box, staring at her unfinished meal. She suddenly didn't look all that hungry anymore.

And as Mion looked back down at her own, she decided that she wasn't hungry anymore either.

_~~~~X~~~~_

After school, just as planned, Satoshi decided to tell the twins what he could about his current situation, as well as Satoko's. The three of them were standing behind the building, their eyes shifting about to make sure that no one else was with them as they spoke. Satoko was still in the classroom, as Chie was talking to her about one thing or another, and Satoshi would be picking her up right after the chat was over. Shion looked horribly concerned for the blonde-haired boy, but Mion knew deep in her heart that whatever it was, they couldn't fix it, and that she should be expecting the worst, or maybe even worse than the worst.

"Satoshi-kun," Shion started, "I'm really worried about you. You're all beat up…"

Satoshi looked away from Shion, trying to avoid her direct gaze. Mion knew why. It wasn't exactly easy to be talking to someone you just turned down. Mion knew that all too well.

"It's not me you should be worried about, Mion, I'm just fine," Satoshi replied, his gaze focused on the shed nearby. "It's Satoko."

"What's wrong with Satoko?" Shion asked.

Satoshi looked down at his feet, shuffling them about. "Well, you see, she hasn't been all that well. You know how she was before; she was able to take our uncle and aunt without a problem. No one could hurt her, even if they tried to. If they knocked her down and bruised her, she would stand right up as if nothing even happened. But for some reason, it's not like that anymore." He sighed. "Lately, they've become worse… they are beating her more than before, demanding more from her… and now, she can't take it."

Mion knew it. Even Satoko's wish to become strong enough could never uphold and prevent her uncle and aunt from shattering her into thousands of pieces. It was bound to happen eventually.

"But why now?" Shion asked Satoshi, "she was perfectly fine before."

"I said things got worse, Mion…" said Satoshi, probably a little more harshly than he had intended to, as he glanced up.

Shion looked away and became silent after that, probably reminded of him rejecting her just a while before. The pained look that soon appeared on her face only supported Mion's suspicions.

He looked down at his feet again. "I'm sorry about that," he whispered. "But things haven't been easy. I can keep things up and I can defend myself somewhat. Well, enough for me to be fine… but it's not my uncle and aunt directly causing pain to me that's causing this. It's Satoko. I want to protect and defend her, and that's where I got all these bruises. See?" Satoshi pointed a particularly large bruise that was located just a few centimeters from the end of his forearm. "This one was when I jumped in the way of aunt grabbing Satoko, and she grabbed me instead. She was more than happy to give me this bruise for it. But that's not enough to protect her, even. I can't always be there for her, and they always hurt somehow… Be it by their hands or by their words."

Shion clenched her fists, but she still remained silent. Mion just looked away, remembering how Satoshi was before he disappeared. This was the same exact thing that had happened before. Satoshi began to become very stressed over Satoko, and things got worse, and then… before anyone knew it…

Mion bit her lip. Things were bad, but they weren't going to go that far, were they?

"About the child protective services…" Mion started.

"Chie-sensei called them, I think. But you know… Satoko just sent them off. She told them that there was nothing wrong and that the call was false. This happened when I was out of the house, fetching some food for uncle and his friends to eat later that night. They believed her lies and left." Satoshi looked over to the side, shaking his head. "If I had been there, I would have told them that there was something wrong, and that we had to be saved. Aunt and Uncle told us that if we ever reported them or anything like that, they would beat us. I don't doubt them, but that doesn't scare me. Satoko, however…"

"And that's why you've been so stressed?" Shion suddenly spoke up, "because of Satoko?"

Satoshi nodded his head. "I don't think I can go on. It's so hard… I need to protect her, but you know, it hurts. It hurts when I jump in front of her and take the punch for her. It hurts when they call me things instead of Satoko. And even that isn't enough… because Satoko breaks anyways. Day by day, another crack forms, and soon enough, Satoko won't be anything anymore…"

Shion clenched her teeth. "And why can't she take care of herself anymore?"

"I told you, our Uncle and Aunt got worse! They never beat us this much, they never said things this harsh…" Satoshi said. "And not only that, but Satoko… she's not really the same person she was back then. She dropped the whole pretending to be strong thing, don't you remember?"

Shion looked down at the floor, her hands still remaining in tight fists. "But she should still be able to fend for herself. She shouldn't rely on you for everything, Satoshi-kun!" she blurted out, probably without thinking as Shion always did whenever she was angry. Really, she had problems with that.

"It's not her fault," replied Satoshi, "it's not her fault at all. It's not her fault that Uncle and Aunt have grown worse, they just did. So don't blame her for it." He glanced from Mion to Shion, and when his eyes struck Mion's, pain filled them. Mion cringed, suddenly remembering the boy's confession of love to her and how she had literally pushed him away. Mion could tell that he was thinking the same exact thing as she was, as pain stronger than before grew in his eyes. She quickly averted them, not wanting to cause anymore pain and memories for the boy, but she knew that they were probably repeating in her head.

Shion seemed to notice this as she looked from her sister to her crush, and she looked a little bit angry. "Anyways, Satoshi-kun, if you have any problems… you can talk to us. We'll try to sort things out and make everything better for you."

Satoshi nodded slowly. "Yeah. Well, thank you. I'll come to you if anything comes up. But for now, I really have to get going, or Aunt and Uncle will yell at Satoko and I for coming home so late." A look of worry plastered over his face, this time stronger than before. "I don't want that to happen again, last time, they really hurt Satoko. I got in the way of course, but there were a lot of bruises…"

Shion looked enraged, like her whole face was turning into magma or something. She certainly looked like she would erupt into flames anyways.

In the distance, Satoko was coming towards the group. When Mion saw her walk, she got a better look at the bruises covering her and the scars on her. There were so many, and Mion had to wonder why someone would ever want to hurt her. Bumps on her arms, gashes on her cheeks, scars on her forehead… there were too many. However, Mion felt far more pain from her eyes than from her scars. She could imagine all the punches being thrown at her when she looked at those bruises, but when her attention was drawn to Satoko's eyes, which were looked dull and almost lifeless, she felt like she was being stabbed right through her stomach with such immense strength that she wondered if any human was even capable of pulling something remotely similar off.

Just seeing those usually happy and bright eyes so full of pain made Mion's heart burn like someone had tossed it in a fire. She realized then just how truly horrible Satoko's Uncle and Aunt were. She had known before, but then, she actually _felt _it. It ripped at her with the claws of thousands of vicious monsters, and Mion wanted nothing more than to run away back to her own world, where things were nice and safe, where everything was happy…

Why, oh why didn't she just stop when Keiichi told her to? It was just a stupid game. She should have believed him. Was a game of hide and seek really worth all of this?

"Let's go, Satoko," Satoshi said gently. "Aunt is going to be very mad with us again."

"No…" rasped Satoko's broken voice. "No!" she called again, this time much louder and with shreds of screeching pain in her tone. "I don't want to go back there, I don't want Aunt to be mad again. I don't want to hurt again, not again… It hurts too much…"

Satoshi shook his head slowly. "I'll take it for you, Satoko. Don't you worry about a thing… I'll protect you from it. You won't hurt."

Satoko looked slowly up at her brother. "…No… not you either. Not you! They can't hurt you either!"

There was clear stress in Satoshi's gaze as he looked down at his little sister, but all he did was reach forward and ruffle her short locks of yellow hair like he always did. "Now, let's just get home for now, things will be fine. Come on…"

Satoshi grabbed his sister's hand gently and began to lead her back to the house, and off into the distance the two of them went. Mion only stood there and watched the two of them disappear, thinking things over. This situation seemed so similar that it was hurting her head. It was just the same thing from when he had disappeared before in her world. And she knew what that had led to…

But that was only one of her worries.

"Damn that Satoko," hissed Shion under her breath. "Who does she think she is? Becoming all weak and relying on Satoshi like that. Is she blind? Can't she see that Satoshi-kun is stressed and that she is relying too much on him? It's hurting him more than her. That little brat…" Mion looked to Shion's hands, which were clenched so tightly that Mion was afraid that Shion was going to break her own hands. As she scanned upwards and looked into her sister's eyes, she saw nothing of the caring, kind sister that she knew well. There was just pure, scorching fury.

And that was enough to make Mion's heart sink further, because something inside her was screaming at her, telling her that something was going to go horribly, horribly wrong. And that was even more than they already were…

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3: Long Edition.**

**So I lied to you in the last chapter. And this time, my computer wasn't broken. It's working just fine. I'm really glad, and I love the fact that they replaced my keyboard. The old one was way too dirty, and it feel so nice to type with this keyboard. Anyways, I'm rambling on about things that 1. Don't matter 2. You don't want to hear 3. I may have already said before. Back on track. I've been writing for a long time now. I had a two week break before. I just was a little exhausted, so I suppose last week I gave myself a little bit of a break. Just to sit back and relax. Now, I'm actually going on a class trip this week. Washington D.C! Awesome! Anyways, this is lasting for a bit (beginning of Wednesday-Late Friday) so I can't write then of course, so I'm giving you this chapter for now. I may or may not update on Tuesday (I have to go to sleep earlier. I wish I didn't have to go to school at seven thirty for this trip :/. I'll probably sleep on the bus a nyways) so keep that in mind. After that, updates will hopefully return to normal.**

**Writing this again felt really good, I have to admit. I missed writing a bit. I love writing… I guess I've just been writing so much. Actually, we don't have too much longer until the end, so hang in there! Maybe ten or so more chapters? I have until June 28****th****, so that's more than enough time. Then I have camp to relax. I actually will be writing a little something in my notebook during camp, but it's actually not a Higurashi fanfiction, it's for another series and a little more for practice in areas where I would like to improve my writing (first person, for one). EOG should start in August, though I'll probably be working on that other fic at the same time, because I doubt I will finish it in one month at camp.**

**Another thing. Grades. I'm on damn academic notice, which means that I got pretty bad grades and the school is watching me closely. If they feel I'm not doing well, they can kick me out of the school. Now, you can see why I need to improve my grades. I need to work harder now, guys. So I hope you understand. I doubt they'll kick me out, but the thought of being on freaking academic notice bothers me.**

**~Crimso**

**NOTICE: Document manager isn't working. If there are any paragraph scrunches, then I apologize :/.**


	31. Chapter 30: Remains

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Oh life, why must you be so complicated sometimes? Ignore that. I'm sorry guys, school has been tough, I just got back from a school trip to Washington D.C. that was awesome for the most part, my computer is broken AGAIN… and now I have nothing to listen to while I write this aside from pokemon music on youtube. Which I listened to when I wrote the end of BFB. But hey, it adds for a dramatic effect? I also don't have the info documents for my three planned fanfictions. I need those *cries*.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty: Remains_

"There has to be something we could do!" cried Keiichi in frustration as he slammed his balled fist down onto his desk.

However, Rika just slowly shook her head. "It's just about useless, Keiichi. Satoko is not going to admit that she's being abused when her uncle and aunt are treating her like that. It's just not possible."

After school, the club members had decided to hold a meeting on what they could do to help Satoko and Satoshi. Actually, it was Satoshi's idea to do so, but he could not go to the meeting due to his strict curfew, and had requested that the club members report back to him. In her heart, Mion knew that there really wasn't anything that they could do to help the poor girl, but Keiichi had insisted, and she knew how stubborn he could be when it came to that sort of thing. It had been established many times that there was no way that they could possibly chase their uncle and aunt out, but apparently, that didn't matter to Keiichi.

Well, that was just like him, she supposed. That was certainly the Keiichi that she had fallen in love with, and she never wanted him to change.

"Don't you think that we could just tell someone? Listen! I know Chie-sensei's attempt failed, but if we pressured them to come again, then just maybe it would work…!" Keiichi said, his voice tattered up as he spoke just nearly between his clenched teeth. He was using his usual encouraging tone, but for some reason, it didn't have its usual effect on Mion. She usually could believe what he said when he spoke like that, but…

…There truly was no source of hope anymore.

"There's no point. Do you think that Satoko is going to say anything different?" Rika asked.

"Then let's get her to admit that she's being abused! Is that what they want, huh? For her to confirm that she's being abused?" Keiichi asked, whipping his head and vision about the classroom. "Well then, we get her to say it! Then, they can't refuse and they'll have to prosecute the two of them!"

Rika shook her head. "It's not that easy, Keiichi…" She looked down at the ground, a distant look in her purple eyes, as if she was recalling a memory of some sort. "It's just not that easy."

"Nothing is ever that easy, Rika-chan," Keiichi reminded her, "but we can do it if we have the will to."

Maybe that was true, maybe they could if they had the willpower to go out and fix things. However, no one did. At this time, the word hope would make Mion laugh. How long ago had it been since she had come in contact with that silly, nonexistent thing called hope? She could barely remember, and she was sure that she was not the only one in the room who felt that way.

"I just don't think we can," Rika said. "Satoko's stubborn about these kinds of things. You know her."

"She's too stubborn," growled Shion, who had been silent for most of the conversation so far. She had spent the whole time seated on the wooden top of her desk with an enraged look on her face, her teeth gritted together, her arms folded underneath her chest. She had refused to make eye contact with anyone and only joined in the conversation to make a remark like the previous one. "Much too stubborn."

"You can't blame her, really," Keiichi told Shion.

Shion whipped her head around to look at the boy, giving him the most deadly glare ever with her gleaming emerald eyes that caused him to freeze up._ If looks could kill… _Mion thought.

"I can blame her!" snapped Shion. "It's her own fault that she's so damn stubborn! If she just admitted that she was being abused, it would be all over! No more crying, no more pain, no more injury! Not only that, but she's causing Satoshi to hurt as well! Her stupid complaining and whining is causing him to break. Didn't you see how he looked when he asked us to hold this meeting? He was about to shatter into a thousand pieces! His eyes showed it clearly, and if you didn't see it, you must be _blind_!" She looked down at her lap and gritted her teeth, her fists tightening into lumps. "She's causing him to be like this!" she shouted.

"Mi-chan, please," Rena said, "it's not Satoko's fault. If you were in that situation, what would you do?"

"I wouldn't give Shion a hard time," grumbled Shion.

_Well, _Mion thought, _it's true, I have to give her that. _Still, the way she spoke about Satoko sent shivers down her spine for some reason, practically causing her whole body to feel like it was being threatened. An eerie feeling was in the air from it… was her mind trying to give her some sort of warning?

"You're different from Satoko, though," Keiichi pointed out. "Really, if you think about it… Satoko _is_ completely different from Mion. She's not one that can really handle this on her own! She's just a little girl. Do you expect a little girl to be able to take on both her abusive aunt and her abusive uncle?"

"Yes!" Shion back at once, "I certainly do expect her to be able to do that! What the hell was she doing before, then? She was perfectly fine! Satoshi-kun would tell me all about how she was able to stand up to anything they did. She would brace herself against their punches and be able to stand right back up on her feet when they knocked her over, she would be able to ignore the words they said, she could do any task they forced on her without breaking a sweat… and now… she's suddenly lost it. What the hell do you expect me to think?"

Rena sighed. "Mi-chan, she's just—"

"—Don't even start, Rena-san, you weren't here, you can't say anything in her defense," spat Shion.

"But I can," Keiichi said, "really, there's only a certain amount of something that anyone can withstand. Satoko was able to hold her own up until now, but they've gotten worse lately, or so Satoshi has told me. She's reached her limit. She's hurt too much now to be able to take being hurt anymore."

Shion scoffed and turned away, mumbling something under her breath that Mion barely caught. It was something about how she didn't care and that it was Satoko's fault no matter what kind of excuse the others came up with, but that was about all she could get out of it.

"Anyways," Rena started again, "I think it would be good to contact the child services again. We can all go there now, it's not too late." She looked out the window. "The sun hasn't even started to set. And besides, Keiichi had a good point."

Keiichi nodded. "And remember how Satoshi said that Satoko had told the services that there was nothing wrong when he was away? Maybe we could get a different effect if this time he is there. Then maybe they'll realize something's a bit funny…" he spoke.

"That sounds good, I think it may work," Rena said with a smile. "And if it doesn't, at least we tried."  
>Keiichi shot Rena a thumbs up. "That's exactly the spirit you should have, Rena! You all should have Rena's spirit. Just think, even if it doesn't work, at least we did what we could do!"<p>

Something in Mion's head screamed out that it didn't even matter if they tried at all, because the result was going to be the same whether or not they tried, but she tried to forget it. She should try to have Keiichi and Rena's attitude towards the situation, maybe something positive would happen then. Rion would certainly like to see her being a bit more positive, Mion was sure. However, what could she do in this situation, in which the word hope was just something laughably nonexistent?"

She wasn't the only one thinking that way, though, that was for sure. A quick glance at a stubborn Shion and a dejected Rika confirmed that. The two of them looked like they would never even try to accept what Keiichi and Rena were trying to tell them. At least they were sensible to know that the situation was helpless, and that futile struggling only caused more pain.

"I think that we should go, any objections?" Rena asked.

No one objected, but Mion wondered if it was because Shion and Rika didn't want to talk at that moment and that they really did object to it. That was certainly the reason why Mion didn't say anything, anyways.

"Let's get going, then!" Keiichi cried out with great enthusiasm, punching his fist up in the air so to raise the spirit of the club members.

However, the only response he got from that cheery attitude was chilling silence.

_~~~~X~~~~_

As the group marched down the paths to the child services, Mion could only think about how horrible things had turned out in the last few days. Nothing else seemed to come to mind, really. Keiichi would occasionally nudge her in the stomach and try to cheer her up by telling her some sort of lame joke, which was rather amusing, but only for a brief moment. The moment he turned his head to go talk to someone else was the moment that her mind snapped back to her thoughts from before, to the dark abyss that this world had become…

Why did she even bother to tag along if she already knew the result of this? The child protection services weren't going to do a single thing to help Satoko or Satoshi. She knew that they were worthless from before in her world, where they could not save Satoko from the threat of her uncle and aunt, which resulted in Satoshi having to go out and kill the aunt to resolve the issue. It was like watching a sports match where the result of the game was obvious from the start. Why did she even bother?

Well, Rika and Shion must have thought it would be of some use to tag along, because they were with them too, but nether of them said much. Mion understood why completely.

"And then the goat turned to the chicken and said 'wait, that's not your egg!'" Keiichi told Mion in a humorous and emphasized tone as he threw his arms up in the air.

Mion giggled just slightly at his joke. "Nice one," she said.

Keiichi shot her his usual cheesy grin. "Thanks, I worked on that one for about a month."

"Well it certainly paid off," Mion told him.

Keiichi smiled. "Anything to make you happy. I don't like seeing you or anyone else I know down," he said to her, looking at her face. "It's been a while since I've seen your smile. It's as beautiful as usual."

Mion looked away and blushed. She knew that Keiichi was just trying to cheer her up with his words, and they certainly did help, but just for a moment.

"Right, now I'm going to go tell Rika the joke. I think she'll like the part about the turtle." He turned away from Mion and walked over to Rika, cheerfully beginning to explain the joke that he had just told Mion.

Mion sighed, her previous thoughts coming back to her. Why was she here, again? She didn't want to watch them fail, it was a waste of time. Besides, she had a perfectly comfortable futon back at home that was calling for her. Sleeping would be a better use of her time.

"At least it's worth a try," Rion said, "you never know what can happen. Maybe something different will happen."

Mion ignored Rion. There was a time where her encouragement used to do something good for her…

Rion looked away and sighed, shaking her head as she faded away. Perhaps she too had realized that her words had lost their previous effect.

Mion looked at the rest of her group. Keiichi was cheerfully explaining his joke to Rika, but she didn't even seem to be listening. Her face didn't even twitch from its down and depressed position, and her purple eyes remained distant and broken. There really was nothing that could fix that once cheerful, happy girl. It just nearly broke Mion's heart, but the truth be told, it was already too full of dark emotions for that to happen.

Shion was being her usual stubborn self as of recently, scowling at the ground and kicking a rather large pebble as she went along. She was sure her head was full of yells and insults directed towards Satoko and how she was hurting Satoshi, and Mion was scared. She had seen how she had gotten before when it came to Satoko relying on Satoshi, and it was not pretty. She had nearly bashed her head in with a chair, for goodness's sake.

And to be honest, Mion didn't doubt it would happen again.

"Almost there," Rena told the group. "Don't worry, we'll have this all sorted out soon…"

She was too positive, Mion thought. She may be Rena, and she may have just come out of a painful divorce, but she had yet to learn that things in Hinamizawa were not as easy as they seemed, and that moving over here would not suddenly end all her heartbreaking, disastrous problems…

"Yeah, it'll work out, I'm sure," Keiichi said, still a little full of disheartenment over the fact that Rika didn't find his joke the least bit entertaining. He didn't bother sharing it with Shion; he probably knew that his head was worth keeping.

When they arrived at the building, Mion thought nothing of it. She knew that this mission was already a failure and that it had been so at the very start. Keiichi and Rena took the first spot in front of the desk, while Rika gazed distantly at the floor (perhaps it was interesting somehow?) and Shion impatiently tapped the ground with her shoe. Mion decided to look about, focusing her gaze away from the two friends who still thought they had a chance at fixing things. They would realize soon after this that there wasn't such thing as that chance, and she did not want to watch them having to realize this sad truth. It was just too painful.

"I'm Maebara Keiichi, and this is Ryuuguu Rena, as well as the rest of my friends," Keiichi explained as he gestured towards the rest of the group. "And we're here for Houjou Satoko and Houjou Satoshi."  
>The man at the front desk looked up and pushed his slipping glasses up, taking a few moments to give the children a good look. "Oh yes, someone has already stopped by here for Houjou-kun and Houjou-san," he replied<p>

"So they have," Keiichi said, "and I'm well aware of the fact, but it seems like the situation is being neglected and forgotten about. The Houjous are not in any good condition, and are in fact, far from it. You guys don't seem to be doing very much about the situation at hand."

The man looked down at his clipboard, pushing his glasses up so that he could get a good look at what was written there. "We assure you that this case isn't being forgotten about or neglected. We have visited her before and the situation has been checked up upon. Because of legal reasons, I am unable to share most of the information with you, but that is what I can tell you."

"But you left without doing anything," Rena replied, "didn't you?"

He looked back down at his clipboard. "We did not leave without checking up on the situation and confirming that everything was okay. There were no reports of abuse there. All we are going to do now is monitor the couple and make sure that they are living a health life and confirm that there really aren't any cases of abuse." He placed the clipboard down and looked at the group of teenagers.

"What if they were lying?" Shion blurted out. "Did you ever consider that?"

The man looked at her. "We have confirmed that there is no abuse in the household, I assure you," he said, not the least bit taken aback by the girl's sudden rage.

"Did you really look into the situation?" yelled Shion once again as she allowed her rage to show itself in it's fullest. She was not scared about letting herself out like that… it didn't matter to her. Surely the only think that she could think about right now was the condition of her Satoshi, and the fact that this man right here was the reason why she couldn't prevent him from breaking. "You would have seen that there were bruises all over their bodies! Scars, even!"

"I cannot provide anymore information, but we have indeed confirmed that there is no abuse. We will continue to monitor them, but no action will be taken for now," the man responded, completely unfazed by Shion's attitude.

Mion couldn't blame Shion, though. It seemed as if this guy was avoiding her questions by throwing out the matter that they have "confirmed" that Satoshi and Satoko weren't being abused. Then again, there was no way for him to tell that Satoko was lying when she had said that there were no problems at all with her uncle and aunt, especially if she were to conceal her wounds, both the ones on her body and the ones done to her mind.

Keiichi was clenching his fists at his sides, and Rena just let out a sigh. Rika stood there blankly as usual, looking down at a spot on the floor that was for some reason interesting, or so it seemed. Shion looked ready to erupt and spew lava everywhere, burning everyone within sight, but particularly that man who was barely doing his job in helping Satoko

"Thank you for listening," Rena responded, giving the man a slight bow. "Let's go, everyone."

"B-But—" Keiichi started.

"But nothing, Keiichi-kun. We did what we could here, let's head back now," Rena told him gently.

Rena was right, Mion decided. There was nothing that this child protection service was going to do to help Satoshi and Satoko, even after multiple reports of abuse. Satoko had told them that there was no abuse, and that was all there was to it. If she herself had said it, then it must be true, the child protection services probably thought. After all, what kind of person wouldn't admit to being abused and to try to save them from all that pain?

…Well, a lot of people, but still…

The club members exited the child services room and walked out, none of them saying much to each other as they began down the path back to their schoolhouse. Mion didn't think there was much to say anyways, it had all gone as well as everyone knew it would. Sure, Keiichi wanted to give it a shot and Rena encouraged it by saying there may be a chance, but perhaps they were just reassuring themselves of that so that they could say that they did something to help them and let their minds be at peace…

Shion was fuming in her head, and she seriously looked ready to kill someone, something that sent a warning throughout Mion's body. Rika was still depressed and showed no signs of getting any better, which was something that Mion really did expect after an occurrence like the one a few minutes ago. Even Keiichi and Rena weren't speaking, probably worn out after exhausting their last chance at saving Satoshi and Satoko. What else was there to do about the situation now? The answer was obvious. There was _nothing_ that could be done about the situation now. They would just to have to sit there and suffer, and day by day, break more, coming close to the edge where they would shatter into a thousand pieces…

Everyone was silent the whole way back, except for maybe a word here and there from Keiichi and Rena. Keiichi had given up on his jokes from before; they weren't even worth sharing with anyone if Rika hadn't laughed at the last one.

Rion didn't even bother saying any words of encouragement to Mion. There was no reason for her to lie and make something up. Really, at that point, it just seemed more painful to pretend that things would be okay, that there was such thing as hope left in this world. Mion never liked liars, anyways.

They returned to the classroom eventually, and they collected the things that they had left there, slinging their backpacks over their shoulders and sighing out. None of them really seemed to show any signs of speaking or even bothering to say anything, but all that changed when the door slid right open.

"Satoshi?" Keiichi asked, turning to look at the figure in the door frame. "What's going on? Aren't you supposed to be with your aunt and uncle right now?"

The blonde-haired boy shook his head. "Actually, I'm supposed to be out shopping for them, so I have to make this quick…" He looked around the classroom. "Did any of you come up with something? A way to help Satoko, or me?"  
>"Well," started Rena, "we went to the child protection services again. I know they came before, but I thought that if they went again… well, maybe there would be a different result. Anyways, all they told us was that they had confirmed there was no abuse and that they would continue to observe you, but take no action other than that." She looked down at her shoes. "And I was really hoping that they would at least try to do something."<br>Satoshi sighed. "Just as I thought, it's really hopeless…"

"Satoshi-kun," Shion spoke, "I don't want you to be upset. If you need help with anything, then—"

"—I'm fine, you've done enough for me, Mion," Satoshi said, cutting her off completely without even bothering to listen to what else she had to say. Judging by the fact that he had cut her off so suddenly and quickly, Mion became sure that the reason why he did so was just because he really didn't want to be near Shion after what had happened before between them, despite of her kind offer. If she had to be honest with herself, Mion couldn't blame him. She had been there before.

Keiichi looked at Satoshi, a frantic expression painted all across his face. "But what do we do then? I can't sit here and watch you two get beaten up! Seeing Satoko with all those bruises on her face makes me want to murder someone!" he shouted out.

Satoshi slowly shook his head. "I have no idea, but from now on, I'll handle the situation. I guess… aha, I guess there's nothing we can do, really." He looked completely defeated, and at that moment, Mion knew exactly that feeling. That horrible but true feeling of knowing that your best friend was hurt, that your little sister was being torn at, and there was truly nothing that could be done to save them. The feeling knowing that you would have to wake up every day to those horrible people and to the beaten face of a once completely cheerful girl who would brighten everyone's day just by being there beside them. It felt like someone had slammed a rock into her heart.

"No, Satoshi-kun, we have to be able to help!" shouted Shion desperately. It must kill her on the inside to see the boy she loved so broken and sorrowful. Mion pictured Keiichi in her head, with a look of pure sorrow in his eyes where his cheerful look had once been, and where his cheesy grin had once rested on his face. Instead of the boy with such great enthusiasm that it cheered everyone up lay a boy that had been shattered, one that needed cheering up, and one that certainly couldn't cheer anyone up. The dead, hollow look he shot her was enough to seal it for her. It was like having someone stick a knife in her heart and leave it there, allowing the pain to intensify greatly before ripping it right out and sending a spurt of blood everywhere, allowing pain to course throughout her very soul.

Satoshi shook his head. "I'll deal with it from now on. I just came here to check up and tell you to leave it alone, and to grab something."

Keiichi blinked. "Grab something?" he repeated, though his voice was still shaken by the blonde-haired boy's previous words.  
>"Yeah, just let me get to my locker really quickly, then I have to be off. You know, my uncle and aunt will kill me if I'm slow and all…" he said, his voice sounding empty and dead, not like a voice that would come out from the kind boy Mion knew so well.<p>

And no one could do anything but step aside as Satoshi staggered over to his locker and opened it up. No one could say a word as he placed his hand on an object inside before pulling it right out, revealing the length of his metal baseball bat. Mion couldn't scream out as she recalled the last time she had seen that bat in his hands, of the blood that soon stained them, of the horrible pain that shattered through everyone the last time he had held that bat…

She couldn't say a word. She couldn't do anything but stand there as he left the room with the bat in hand, dragging behind him, just like he had done days before he had vanished without a trace. And this time, when he left, all of Mion's remaining happiness, and perhaps the scraps of her hope that had not yet been purged, vanished as well.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.2**

**Life has been complicated, that is why I haven't updated. I am really tired, that is why this Crimso's Corner is way too short. I'm going to end this here with a note saying that I'm sorry and that I will try to pick up the pace of chapters, but no promises. We may just have to wait until school ends a month from now. That's really all I can do before I collapse.. Along with upload this chapter. I'm just too tired to think, maybe I shouldn't be writing when this tired and unable to function… I can't think…  
>It's been a long, very happy day. It's time for it to end, and hopefully with a giant, long rest that will satisfy me. Oh yes, the reason why this wasn't uploaded sooner is because FF was being stupid last night and the image security wasn't displaying. Bah. BY the way, anyone else thing it's funny I accidentally titled this document "Black30" ? ...No? Okay... By the way, the document editor is being stupid, so no looking for paragraph scrunches for now.<strong>

**~Crimso**


	32. Chapter 31: Fury

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**So, I'm in study hall for the first time in forever, and I'm not starting a chapter at twelve AM in the morning like I usually do. Plus, it's a Wednesday. Shocking… I'm not going to get this done any time soon, though. :/.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-One: Fury_

The group of friends had decided to meet at Angel Mort that day, just for a quick break to relieve some stress. They had invited Satoshi to come along, and he had accepted, but Satoko could not go because she was left with the job of cleaning up the room, while Satoshi had to shop in Okinomiya for his uncle and aunt anyways. It was clear that he wasn't completely fine with the idea of letting his sister stay at home, but what could he do?

"And the deer said to the flying squirrel, 'your pine cone is in the refrigerator, silly!'" Keiichi cried out before breaking out into a fit of laughter at his own joke. No one else seemed to think it was that funny, as no one laughed aside from Rena, who only gave a very small giggle.

Rena looked over to her friend, grinning. "Well, that was an interesting joke. I think that your jokes have gotten a lot better." Mion was sure that Rena was lying… she barely even laughed. Perhaps she was trying to go along with it and make her friend feel better. Well, that was certainly a Rena thing to do.

"Well, I thought it was better than usual. The one about the monkey and the tea wasn't that good," Keiichi said.

_It really wasn't_, Mion thought, but she didn't allow her thoughts to be said out loud. Instead, she reached for her cup of water and took a sip of it, swallowing down the cool drink. There really wasn't much to do or to say right now. She knew that she could join in on Keiichi and Rena's conversation, but she really didn't want to be talking. She just wasn't in the mood for Keiichi's jokes.

She wasn't the only one, however. She doubted that Rika was really enjoying Keiichi's jokes when she was busy looking down into her cake, poking with her fork every so often but never bothering to cut off a piece and eat it. She didn't look the least bit hungry, and Mion wondered why she had ordered in the first place then. Well… that really didn't matter. She wasn't really in the mood for cake, either. One of her friends was out there possibly being abused as they spoke… it wasn't like she could just sit there and enjoy eating cake while she knew that.

Shion didn't really say anything either. She would occasionally look to Satoshi, but aside from that, she would just sit there and eat her cake. However, Mion noticed that her grip on her fork was awfully tight… and that her expression would get terribly angry at times for seemingly no reason.

Satoshi was staring at his cup of tea, gazing at it as if there were some sort of monster about to jump out and strangle him. Even though he was scared, he was just was seated there, as if glued to the seat. In his eyes, Mion sensed pure fear. They were wide, shaking, bulging… and certainly weren't the eyes that the girl knew that the usual Satoshi had. He would never look that scared…

A hand would occasionally reach up and touch his neck, scratching it just a bit, but never too much. The smallest of red marks were beginning to form on them, and a bolt of fear struck Mion as she remembered what the most obvious way to tell that someone had Hinamizawa Syndrome. If you weren't sure, you could always check their neck for scratches and red marks, because at level five, the victim will commit suicide by clawing their own throat out.

Satoshi had the syndrome yet again.

He was looking about the room nervously, scanning as if there was someone there, watching him, waiting for his eyes to drift away from them so that they could murder him in a puddle of cold blood. They darted here and there frantically, and Mion was sure that he had checked every single last corner of the room, and every single last person, to make sure that there was indeed no psycho murderer in there… or perhaps… his uncle or aunt.

This had to be the most solemn day at Angel Mort ever.

"Well," Keiichi spoke up, "I'm just going to have to tell another one of my jokes if no one else is going to talk." He cleared his throat. "So, a kangaroo with a propeller hat walks up to a skunk with a bow tie and says—"

"—I don't think anyone is really in the mood for jokes," Rena said bluntly.

Keiichi looked around at the group, nodding. He had probably realized it to, but Mion knew that Keiichi had probably been trying to tell those jokes to cheer everyone up. However, they just weren't working. No one was in the mood for them, as Rena had said. "Well then, what am I supposed to talk about? How we're going to help Satoko? I know we've discussed this before, and I know there has to be a way, but…" he trailed off. Everyone knew what he was going to say after that, so he did not have to speak the words out loud. The truth was that there was no way anymore. It was just that no one had the guts to say it out loud.

"…I'm taking care of it," Satoshi said, "so you don't have to worry about it at all."

Keiichi just nodded slowly, but Mion knew that he couldn't accept that as an answer. It just wasn't Keiichi enough to leave his friends in the dust to suffer. There was no way that he was just going to accept the fact that there was nothing that could be done and that he just had to leave it up to Satoshi, who probably had nothing to do in the first place. That was one of the reasons why she loved him, after all. However, recently, his attitude towards it hadn't been any help at all. Really, it was just a reminder that they really were struggling so much in this world…

Silence followed for the rest of the time, and really, no one had any way to break it. It had really been Keiichi this whole time, just telling lame joke after lame joke. Mion wondered why they even came to this place. It was to cheer people up and have a good time, right? Why had she even agreed to that in the first place? Cheering up and having a good time right now was under the currently very long list of things that were currently impossible.

The whole time, Mion just sat there, staring at the others and watching their moves. By now, not even Rena or Keiichi could be really happy. They just silently ate their food and said nothing to anyone, clearly pained looks on both of their faces. Keiichi even looked a little bit frustrated.

When someone finally decided to speak, it was about ten minutes later. "I'm going to go home, Aunt and Uncle are going to be mad if I don't grab that food soon," Satoshi said as he stood up from the booth. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Rena said, "and we understand completely."

"Thank you. I'll see you soon…" Satoshi turned around and began to walk in the other direction, but he had barely taken a few steps when he suddenly stopped and whipped around. His purple eyes stared at the group, wide with clear fear in them, and by the look on his face, you would think that he was staring at demons. His whole body seemed to be frozen as if coated in ice, and not even a muscle twitched.

However, the look of fear soon melted ever so slightly off his face, and his body twitched just a bit. "Was someone following me?" he asked.

Keiichi raised an eyebrow. "No, no one was following you. What makes you think that?"

Satoshi looked confused. "There was a presence behind me just now… and I heard other footsteps. They tried to sync with mine completely, but when I stopped, there was an extra one…" He looked down at the ground, his eyes once again widening with a larger amount of fear. His hands shook at his sides as if they were having an earthquake, and they barely managed to clench into a stiff fist. "I thought I heard it… But aha, I guess not…"

Keiichi grinned at him, probably trying to calm him down with it. "Yeah, it was probably just your imagination."

"Yeah," Satoshi replied. "Anyways, I'm going now."

And that time, he left for real, not bothering to stop to turn around or anything else. As he exited, Mion's eyes remained glued to him. Just before he left, Mion noticed a hand reaching right up to his neck, scratching at it just a little bit…

She bit her lip. There was nothing she could do if he indeed had the syndrome. No one had a cure in her world, so why would they need a cure in this world, where no regrets existed prior to this?

Silence once again took over when Satoshi left, with no one having much to do or say. Rena was slowly eating her food, looking barely as if she could enjoy it. Rika was much the same, and both Shion and Keiichi seemed to be in deep thought. Both of their expressions looked strikingly similar to Mion, with the two of them both wearing expressions that were twisted in complete frustration, though Mion had to note that Shion looked a little bit more angry than Keiichi did.

"Damn, why the hell are we so helpless?" growled Keiichi as he clenched his hands into fight fists, his body trembling with frustration.

She sighed again. Really, she never before thought that a day at Angel Mort could be _this_ depressing…

_~~~~X~~~~_

There wasn't much left that Mion could do. That was something that she had realized a long time ago, but now, it was really starting to sink in as she sat under the covers of her futon, having nothing but the comfort that the warm sheets gave her. That was all that she wanted right now, anyways. Shion wouldn't be a very good source of comfort right now…

She knew what was going to happen now. After seeing Satoshi with that dreaded bat, and after seeing him march out of the room scratching his neck, Mion knew that the events that followed were going to be the same as last year in her world. He was going to kill his aunt, and then after that… She bit her lip. She didn't want to have to think about it. It hurt her too much to think about something like that. The memories were just too strong in her head, and much too painful…

She couldn't stop him now. There was nothing that she could do, after all. What could she do? Jump in front of him and say "don't murder her, you're going to disappear!" or something? He wouldn't believe her and he would just brush it off, as he was desperate to do something to save his sister. In his mind, murder was the best solution, and there was nothing that could convince him otherwise when it was his little sister that was on the line.

Even though it had been a day since he had announced that he was going to kill his aunt (well, not really, but that's technically what he was doing when he grabbed the back, or so Mion took it as) there was no murder yet, but Mion was sure that he was just taking his time to figure things out. Throughout the Angel Mort, she had been observing him, watching his every move and step to see how he was. That was truly the only thing that she could do… and it wasn't even an action to prevent it. It was just watching like a helpless bystander. …But was that not even a metaphor, but a fact?

She remembered his behavior. It had been different, especially considering his condition the day before. Really… he was slowly growing worse and worse as time went on… And now, at night, she was sure that things had only gotten worse.

Her thoughts were cut off as she heard the sliding door to her room being pulled right open, and she didn't even need to look up to know that it was Shion. She didn't really want to look up, really. Shion would be of no comfort to her right now, and to be honest, seeing her would only make things worse. She had been only a reminder of how helpless things were as of recently.

"Shion," Shion spoke to her, a small amount of annoyance in her voice, but less so than usually these days. "Satoshi-kun called me."

That was enough to pull Mion from underneath the covers of her futon, forgetting all about what she had thought before about not wanting to see Shion. She looked at her, blinking in confusion. Satoshi? Why? "What did he say?" Mion asked.

"He wanted us to come down and take Satoko for him. Apparently she's supposed to be going shopping with him right now, but he insists on doing it by himself and thinks that it would be a good time for us to take Satoko out and cheer her up a little bit," she informed her sister.

A pang of pain hit Mion's head as she recalled a similar phone call Shion had told her about in her world. On the day of the Watanagashi festival and the same night he killed his aunt, Satoshi called Shion and told her to take care of Satoko for him, just for that night, because he wasn't able to do so. Knowing that, Mion knew that something horrible must be planned for tonight, and that there was nothing in the world that she could do to stop what was going to happen now…

Really, being so helpless was the worst feeling in the world.

"What did you tell him?" Mion asked.

"I said yes," Shion replied, much to Mion's surprise. She knew that Shion and her weren't getting along so well, so she had expected her not to be too happy about the idea. "I figured that it would be a good idea. If it means helping her out, it means helping Satoshi-kun too. You know he's been feeling stressed out because of her." For a moment, Shion's eyes flashed with rage blazing with tips of dancing fire brighter than the sun, but it was only for a few seconds before it disappeared, leaving Mion wondering if she really had just seen that or if it was her imagination.

"All right," Mion said, pulling herself up to her feet. "Shall we go and get her, then?"

Shion nodded. "Let's."

The two sisters walked out of the house and down the paths of Hinamizawa, none of them really saying much. Really, it had been a while since they had joked around with each other, and when they spoke, it was only because of a serious matter like the previous one. There were never any random discussions like before, and no jokes and laughter to be shared with each other. It felt like she was with a completely different person these days rather than the Shion that she knew so well.

In fact, none of her friends were being themselves. It was like they were _all _different people. But wasn't that how it was in the first place?

She figured it would be good to get her mind off of things as she walked. First of all, what was she even going to do to help with Satoko? She knew that cheering her up would be the one thing that she should try to achieve, but how did one cheer up a completely broken girl? She had no idea.

Shion and Mion approached the road near Satoko and Satoshi's house, and they were greeted by the two of them standing in the middle off it, a good while away from the house so that their uncle and aunt didn't catch them. Satoshi walked over to them, and with a nod, slowly handed the girl off to them.

Mion looked down at Satoko. In her eyes, there was no more room for that cheerful, happy girl that burst out with her signature laugh every time that she pulled off a successful trap. There was no girl with a smile so bright and mischievous that it could make her smile as well. There was just nothing but days of suffering clouding them up. She looked _dead_.

Slowly, Mion looked into the eyes of Satoshi, shock and disbelief in her own. He looked very pained as well, but not nearly as much as his younger sister. However, Mion knew that on the inside, he was suffering just as much as Satoko. He just didn't let it show to the world.

"Thank you for doing this for me, you two," Satoshi told them. He looked down at his little sister, smiling. "Satoko," he addressed her, causing the young girl to robotically move her head to look at her brother. "You just have a good time and know that you won't get in trouble for any of this. I won't tell Aunt, and you won't either, and then no one is going to hurt you. Just smile and have fun for a little bit, all right? I promise you after this, you won't hurt anymore…" he told her very gently.

Satoko nodded slowly but said nothing.

"Good." He looked back to Shion and Mion. "Do anything you can to make her happy. I'm counting on you two. Not just for today… but I would like it if you could take care of her tomorrow, too. No… not just tomorrow. I would like it if you could look out for her forever and ever."

Shion looked alarmed. "No! Just for tonight, Satoshi-kun. She has you, remember?" she said.

Satoshi grinned. "I'm not too reliable these days. I put all my faith in you two." He looked over back at the house in the distance, making sure that his aunt and uncle weren't watching him from a distance or anything. "Anyway, I have to get going now, or Aunt and Uncle will get annoyed if I take much too long. I'm counting on you two to cheer her up as best as you can." He looked down to his little sister. "You just have fun, okay?"

"Yeah," said Satoko's weak, broken voice.

He smiled. "All right. I'll be back to pick you up when I'm done. Until then…" He turned around and began to walk off into the night, leaving behind the twins and Satoko, staring as she watched her brother go.

A look of alarm made it's way across her face and she ran to her brother, grabbing him around the stomach and holding him tightly. Satoshi stopped right in his tracks and looked down at the poor girl, who was clinging so desperately to her older brother. There were no tears in her eyes. At this point, she had cried too much for her to cry any longer. "Don't leave me, Nii-nii!" cried Satoko desperately, her voice muffled by his shirt. "Without you, they're going to… they're going to…!"

Satoshi reached down and pet his little sister gently, ruffling up her yellow hair. "Aunt and Uncle aren't here. Nothing is going to happen while I'm gone, Satoko," he told her in his usual gentle, kind voice. "It's just Shion and Mion. They'll protect you and they certainly won't do anything bad to you."

Satoko vigorously shook her head. "No… no…!"

There was a pained look in Satoshi's eyes, and as soon as that appeared in his eyes, a spark of blazing anger appeared in Shion's. She clenched fists and held them at her sides, grinding her teeth together as she viewed the scene before her. Mion just reached out and put a hand on Shion's shoulder, causing her to break out of the trance and look at her sister with a confused expression. Slowly, Mion shook her head at her, causing Shion to grumble a bit before looking away.

Eventually, Satoshi detached Satoko from him and managed to walk away without her chasing after him, but only because Mion had her hand around her arm and prevented her from running after him. Otherwise, she was sure that Satoko would have dashed off after her older brother, not wanting to be away from him. She knew it hurt to be away from him, but she really needed this. She would have a time to relax and cheer up, and Satoshi would have some time in his head to know that Satoko was in good hands for once, though Mion knew that these two things would not help at all in the long run. After all… What Satoshi was going to do was going to change everything.

She grimaced as she watched Satoshi walk off into the distance, knowing that with every step he took, he was leading her and the world closer to the point of no return… or perhaps just further past it.

"Let's go, Satoko," Mion said gently.

Satoko only nodded slowly, her expression even more full of pain than before, if that was even possible. Now that she was without her brother, she knew that it would be harder for her until they let her settle in and relax. But even though it couldn't change much, Mion was determined to do just a little bit something to make her feel just a little bit better, since that was truly the only thing that she could do… But then again, it really wasn't something that was possible to do in the first place.

When they arrived back at home, they instantly took Satoko to their room and allowed her to settle down. Mion just watched her sit down on the futon with a dead expression on her face, not knowing what to do with the young girl. What was she supposed to do to make a broken girl smile? It just wasn't something that could be easily done. Besides, where would she even start? She knew that she loved the games that she used to play with her, but…

"So, Satoko, do you want to play a board game or something?" Mion asked the girl, trying to put on the most cheerful voice that she could possibly manage, something that she found harder to do than she thought it would be.

Satoko said nothing.

"…Come on, I have some of your favorites!" Mion said. "You know how fun they are!"

She still said nothing and just sat there, staring at nothing.

Mion sighed. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked, falling backwards onto her futon. "I have no idea how to make her smile."

Shion shrugged. "Perhaps we should play a new kind of game, or do something funny to make her laugh. Like… how about if you tell her one of Kei-chan's jokes?"

Keiichi's jokes were always awful, but it was worth a shot if it was about making Satoko happy. "Oh, Satoko? Let me tell you a joke." She grinned as she looked at the little girl, trying to make it a little better. "So, what side of a cheetah has the most spots?"

Satoko didn't react.

"The outside!" cried Mion.

Satoko just blinked at her, the dead look still in her eyes. There was no sign of her being the least bit amused at the joke.

"You had to tell her _that _one," sighed Shion, shaking her head. "That's the worst one in the book."

Mion sighed. Yeah, she had picked the worst of the bunch just to see what it would do, but Keiichi's jokes weren't known to be the best jokes ever. "Anyways, let me tell you a funny story. When we were little, Onee and I would play out in the backyard. It was summer, so all these cicadas were about at the time. Now when Onee wasn't looking, a cicada flew onto her head. So I told her that there was a bee on her head, and she freaked out because she thought it was going to sting her! She even fell in the mud!" laughed Mion.

Satoko didn't seem all that amused, or even interested in the joke. Mion even doubted she was listening.

"When did that happen?" asked a very confused Shion.

"I was just making something up. Anyways." Mion searched her head for something funny to tell the girl, but nothing came to mind. "Well, one day, a turtle walked up to a rabbit. He told the rabbit that he had lost his hat, but he couldn't find it. All the rabbit did was laugh. So the turtle walked over to the monkey and told him the same thing, but all he got was the monkey's hooting laughter. Then he went to the fish in the water, and he asked him if he had seen his hat. The fish said to look closely at the water. And when the turtle looked down, he saw his own reflection… and that the hat was on top of his head the whole time!"

Once again, Satoko didn't smile or laugh. Mion frowned and placed her hands on her hips. Maybe getting her to laugh just wasn't the way to do this?

"I give up with the funny jokes and stories, Onee. Go find some other way to help me cheer her up or something," sighed Mion.

Shion sighed and shook her head. "I knew those were never going to work. How about if I go grab a snack from the kitchen to give to her or something? I think I have some ice cream in the freezer." She looked at Satoko and smiled. "I know that you love ice cream. Satoshi told me that chocolate is your favorite, and guess what we have! Chocolate-flavored ice cream, your favorite!"

Mion glanced to Shion. "I think that we should get her some food first before dessert."

"Fine," Shion said, "ice cream will come after food. Give me a moment."

Shion walked out of the room, and Mion remained there with Satoko. She did nothing the whole time but sit there and stare at the wall. Mion wanted to do something to help, but she knew in her heart that at the moment, there was nothing that could truly cheer her up, not even the food that Shion was cooking or the ice cream that she loved so much. A broken girl who had been abused for days could not simply be fixed with ice cream and a little bit of food. Putting yourself back together after falling apart was not an easy task, and it required months, even years, of good treatment and cheerful days full of nothing but happiness. And sometimes, some broken people couldn't even be fixed at all.

Several minutes later, Shion walked in with bowls of rice. She handed one to Mion and one to Satoko, and kept one for herself. They began to eat wordlessly, with no one even bothering to make Satoko happy by joking around or anything. It seemed that Shion too knew that fixing her was no easy matter, and just joking around was never going to put her back together. She was being beaten daily, and to a girl who was broken like that, nothing could possibly be funny.

There were no words to be shared, really. It was a very quiet dinner, and it lasted a long while, as Satoko was pretty slow at eating the rice. Her movements were very slow and robotic, something that caused Mion's heart to stab with a pain that swelled up and coursed through her entire body, spreading like a wildfire. It burned and hurt so much to see her like that. A young girl so horribly broken… there was no worse sight.

Shion collected the dishes when the group was done eating and brought them back to the kitchen. It took her several more minutes to bring back a bowl full of ice cream for Satoko, as well as two more for herself and her sister. She passed them out and began to enjoy the ice cream.

Mion found that she could barely take joy in the chocolaty taste of the ice cream. For some reason, it just couldn't cheer her up like usual. A small thing like that could never fix anything… and even though it couldn't fix Satoko, at least it made her a little bit happy to have it. She was sure that her uncle and aunt wouldn't have let her have anything like ice cream. In fact, she did look just the slightest bit happy eating the icy treat, but only just a little bit. It really was hard to tell through the days of pain that clouded her purple eyes.

However, in the middle of the meal, her dish fell over and spilled the ice cream about the rug. As she looked at the spilled treat, she gasped and her eyes began to water a bit. Soon enough, she burst into a fit of tears, crying out. "Nii-nii!" she yelled, suddenly becoming desperate for her only source of protection as the only thing that was keeping her the slightest bit happy was taken from her. "Nii-nii! Come here! Come back soon! Help me right now!"

Mion whipped over to Shion, not sure what to do. However, the fury in Shion's eyes was blazing, and Mion knew that there would be no end to it now. The image of Satoshi's stress was probably strong in her mind, and with that image, Mion knew that Shion would show Satoko no mercy.

"You…" growled Shion, "you little brat. Do you have to go crying over your ice cream dish tipping over? Huh? Do you have to cry to your brother because _you_ did something as silly as spilling your ice cream?"

Satoko just cried on, not hearing Shion.

Mion had a horrible feeling in her stomach, knowing what kind of pain her sister would inflict upon the girl if she got too angry. "Onee…" Mion tried pleading, but she was as good as mute before Shion's rage.

Shion gritted her teeth. "Well, are you going to continue to cry to your nii-nii, even though he's not here? You're going to rely on him for cleaning up your mess when he's not even there? Well I'll tell you what, brat! You won't always be able to rely on him for everything in your life. One day, he's not going to be there for you, and you'll have to do everything for yourself!"

Satoko kept crying, probably not really listening or only half listening to Shion's yelling.

Shion's anger was blazing more than the flames of a forest fire, and spreading even faster than one as well. If anger was indeed fire, then half of Hinamizawa would have been burned to the ground already. She stomped right up to Satoko and grabbed her by the hair, throwing her into the wall and causing the poor girl to cry out in panic and pain. Now she was crying hareder, and realizing that she won't pay attention without force, Shion grabbed her and held her against the wall by the strands of her hair.

"You know what kind of pain you've been causing your brother because of your whining?" she shouted into the girl's ear. "You've been causing him all this stress! He's hurt beyond anything, and he can't manage himself! You're a selfish brat who can only think of yourself!"

Mion was panicking. What should she do to stop Shion? "Onee, stop it right now!" she demanded, abandoning her ice cream dish and standing up on two legs. Her body tensed up, ready to fight if needed.

Satoko's wailing grew louder as she was pinned against the wall, causing Shion to growl and practically spit in her face. "Yeah, go on, cry for your nii-nii, and cry because this hurts! I bet you cry like this whenever your Aunt and Uncle do this to you, right? RIGHT?" She smashed a punch into Satoko's stomach, causing her to gasp out and cut her breath short. "Go on, cry for him, you weakling! I bet you could have taken this a while ago! Why the hell did you grow so weak, you little brat? Grow up!"

There was horrid pain in Satoko's eyes, even more than before. She came here to get away from the abuse and suffering, and now… and now…! Mion didn't hesitate any longer. She ran up to Shion and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, throwing her to the side with brutal force, causing her grip on Satoko to release and her to slam against the floor. She didn't hesitate to grab Satoko and hug her tightly to her chest, rocking her back and forth in her arms. "Shh, don't cry. No one is going to hurt you here. Listen, I'll give you my ice cream bowl. I don't really like chocolate ice cream, anyways. And you can ignore Onee…" she told her.

Satoko hugged Mion tightly and continued to cry into her chest, and Mion held her there softly. She looked over the corner, where Shion was slowly pulling herself up. She looked at her sister, and when she did, Mion gave her the most horrifying glare ever, one that was full of hatred and anger, and one that was comparable to the gaze of an enraged demon.

Shion looked horrified as the reality of what she had just did hit her, and she quickly stood up and ran out of the room, not even bothering to apologize, probably feeling terribly guilty.

And Mion held Satoko there, allowing her to cry out into her arms until she couldn't cry anymore. Then, she fed the girl her ice cream and cleaned up the mess that was made. She spent the rest of the time watching her as best as she could, sometimes playing a few card games with her, but nothing too complicated to make her upset.

Shion didn't appear once.

Mion hated feeling so helpless. She tried her best, but in the end, nothing like ice cream or card games or holding her could really fix her. A wound like this was one that could scar, and a situation that was most likely to never completely heal. She would always be somewhat broken from this, and there was nothing she could do about that. Absolutely _nothing_. She had to sit there and watch her fall apart, watch her be beaten every single day, watch her lose herself more and more each day, knowing in her heart that there was no way to stop it.

When it was time for her to go, Mion didn't say a word to Satoshi about Shion. It was unnecessary and would cause more drama. Satoshi thanked her for taking care of Mion, but when he left, she noticed something.

Satoshi's shirt was stained with some blood.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Let's all hug Satoko right now, because she really needs it. The poor, poor girl doesn't deserve to have to go through all this… *hugs*. I feel bad for her, even though I'm the one who is writing this.**

**I would also like to say sorry for the slow updates again. Life is very complicated. Finals are coming up soon enough, and when that comes, well… everything is going to be complicated. Tons of studying... argh. Camp starts June 28****th****, so I have enough time to finish this, I think. I certainly had enough time to finish GED. I think I was at chapter thirty-two in GED on May 28****th**** or something similar, and I finished June 19****th****, so I have time. My grades are awful right now, but they are getting better with more effort, so I need enough time to fix them up. Also, I'm going through horrible drama with my best friend right now, and it really is awful… But you know what? I'm happy right now, because it's the weekend! Well, that's not it of course :P. But I won't ramble on about that.**

**Look out for new chapters. I'm suspecting forty-five chapters for this fic? Yeah, that sounds about right.**


	33. Chapter 32: Demon's Reflection

**Crimso's Corner V.2**

**So, yeah. How are you all today? I'm tired, but guess what? I'm writing anyway. I felt like I should :D… Maybe I shouldn't over-tire myself? Oh well, I need to get more chapters up, you want to read more, I want to write more, it all work out, right? The only thing that disagrees in this scenario is school, and no one likes school anyways.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Two: Demon's Reflection_

It was no surprise that the next day, the village had announced that a murder had taken place around last night, though the exact details weren't yet known and the police were busy investigating that. What was again no surprise to Mion was that the body that was found had been identified as Houjou Tamae, also known as Satoko and Satoshi's aunt. It didn't take long for Mion to realize what had happened. In fact, she had already known what had happened before it even happened.

"It's useless," she muttered to herself, "everything is just useless. There's no point in anything anymore…"

Rion looked down upon the girl, but Mion could not see her, as her back was turned to her. She didn't want to face the goddess right now, who would only tell her to cheer up and that things would get better. What lies… She didn't need lies right now. They tasted bitter, and she _hated_ things that were bitter. So she only spoke words to the goddess, just wanting to share her feelings with someone, but hoping that Rion wouldn't bother.

However, Rion hadn't tried to speak encouraging words in a while. Perhaps she too had realized that it was completely useless trying to cheer her up, because there was no more chance of this being a perfect world, or being able to be fixed. Both she and Mion knew what happened to Satoshi after this in the original world (despite Rion not being from that world) and it wasn't pretty. But, worst of all, there was no way to avoid it…

She bit her lip hard enough to draw shimmering droplets of blood that she quickly licked up with her tongue. The metallic taste was just a reminder of how much of it had been spilt in the last few days. Not just her own blood, but Houjou Tamae's, as well as Satoshi's and Satoko's… As well as the blood that she knew was going to end up staining the ground of Hinamizawa in a few days. It was inevitable. No way was she going to save it.

"I want to go home…" she whispered. "I just want to go back to my own Hinamizawa. Things were perfect there… why in the world did I think that this was a perfect world again?" she asked herself. Yes, why indeed did she think it was regretless in the first place? She had already thought about it and come to the conclusion that there could have been regrets existing before… but…

"I can tell you that those regrets were completely gone when we entered the world. That is what I know for sure," Rion told her in a serious tone that was unlike the goddess to use. "I know that can't be what's causing this…"

Mion clenched her hands into tight fists. She gritted her teeth and thought hard about what she had just said. Rion was a goddess, wasn't she? She knew about this world, didn't she? Then how the hell didn't she know how things went wrong? She should know, shouldn't she? She could do something, couldn't she? As if all the fury in the world had fallen upon her at that very moment, Mion whipped right around and glared into the goddess's lemon eyes. "You don't know?" she shouted. "How do you not know? You're a goddess; you know everything about this world, don't you? Powerless or not, you at least should know that! If you don't, you may as well call yourself a powerless god and take back everything else that I said before!" she snapped. "You can do something to fix it, right? Use your powers or something, right? If not, there has to be a way that you could take me back! Don't lie and say no!"

Rion looked taken aback by Mion, to say the very least. If Mion was carrying all the anger in the world on her shoulders, then Rion was carrying all the shock in the world. "I-I don't know!" she insisted, "I really don't know why things went wrong! But it's not because of the regrets; I know they didn't exist when we came into this world! I guess something happened? I don't know! But yes, I am a powerless god. But…" Rion looked at the ground, her hands also clenching into tight fists out of what appeared to be frustration. "Yeah, I'm a powerless god. I can't do a thing to save you, Shion. I know you can figure it out, though, and if things get too bad, then I can do something…"

"What, are things not bad enough?" Mion practically screamed at the much younger looking girl. "Do something now if you can do something!"

"I can't now," she told the girl, sounding a bit less shocked for being yelled at like that. "But just like when I pulled your spirit after you died in the other world, I can pull your spirit after you die in this one. I can take you to a new world. Maybe it won't be like this one, but it won't be anything like the world that your from. I don't have access to those worlds…"

Mion blinked at the goddess. She really was useless, huh? Well, if that was the case, then she could believe her and forgive her somewhat for not doing anything to save her and stop this horrible fate. She still was a bit frustrated, though. The great Oyashiro couldn't even stop a disaster from happening? What kind of pathetic god was that? The Oyashiro told of in tales was much more powerful than that! _Oh, if the villagers knew that Oyashiro was really just a powerless little girl… No, three of them, I suppose. I don't know what they look like though, and the Kimiyoshi one is dead… Whatever, it doesn't matter._

"But then, what could have gone wrong?" Mion asked. "It's the only thing that I can think of right now, Rion."

"I have no idea. But you can figure it out, I'm sure." Rion shot the girl a grin that gave Mion a small amount of confidence, but just as much as you could possibly give to a broken girl who had abandoned the idea of hope a long time ago.

But if it wasn't the regrets, she didn't know what it was. Was it that the resolutions were too weak and easy to break? No, nothing like the tattoo would be weak and easy to break, that was something that was completely irreversible. It was the only thing that hadn't come undone, Mion realized, probably because waking up one day with a tattoo would just be ridiculously unrealistic and wasn't something that could happen.

She thought back to the first moment she realized there was no tattoo on her back, and had to chuckle a bit darkly at that. Well, perhaps if she was in another world, but she wasn't in one now.

"Well, you don't need to think too hard about it right now," Rion said, "just continue on with things. I think that…I think that you need to check up on someone right now," she reminded her gently.

Mion didn't need to guess who she was talking about. The image of Satoshi instantly painted itself in her mind, and she knew that was exactly what Rion meant. She needed to go and check up on him and the Houjou family to find out how things were going, even though she already knew what would become of it. Well, better do it anyways… It would be good to do.

She forced herself to stand up on her two, wobbly feet, and then out the door. Rion faded away as she followed Mion close behind, having nothing much to say or do anymore now that Mion had made up her mind about what she was going to do now. As Mion walked down the pathways of Hinamizawa, she thought about Satoshi, and the inevitable fate that followed. Would Satoko be able to heal after this in this world, or had she broken far too much already to be repaired? She miraculously managed to fix herself back in her world, but… never were the scars fully healed. Scars could never go away, after all.

Mion was about halfway to Satoko and Satoshi's house when she noticed him standing underneath a rather shady tree. Studying him carefully, Mion realized that there was a stressed, tired, and yet fearful look plastered on his face. His hands had been stuffed into his pockets, and he was kicking the dust aimlessly, allowing clouds of dirt to fly up into the air and land back down again, only to be kicked right back in the air. There was a particularly noticeable bruise on his right cheek as well as his right wrist, but he hadn't even bothered covering them or anything. The stains of blood from yesterday were gone as expected, but she knew that there was still blood on his hands, no matter how hard he had washed himself before.

She wondered if it would be a good time to approach him. Probably not, but she decided she would do it anyway. She had to talk to him and learn more, after all.

"Satoshi-kun!" Mion yelled to him, waving back and forth frantically to try to look about a hundred times more cheerful than she was on the inside. Maybe one hundred was too little, she then thought.

The boy looked over to her, putting on what was probably a forced smile on his face. He didn't do anything more than that, though, and just remained in place. Mion decided to be the one to walk over to him, and quickly went over to where he was standing, trying to make it seem like she was actually a little bit happy. That would lighten the atmosphere a bit more, thankfully. She had felt as if it had been crushing her underneath how dark it was before.

Satoshi grinned again, but now with a clearer and closer look, Mion knew that that it was fake and forced. "Hey," he greeted, not a very standard greeting for him.

Mion blinked at him, trying to come up with some topic of conversation without jumping right into some painful topic. However, deciding not to think about it too much, she asked what was one her mind. "Um, where did you get those bruises from?" she asked him, allowing her eyes to briefly jot from his bruised cheek to his right wrist. They looked horribly black and blue, and Mion wondered if she had ever seen bruises that size in all her life. The bruises on Satoko from before could compete, but would probably lose by just a bit.

"Oh," he said. He looked over to the bruise on his wrist, sighing. "You see, I didn't get to buying those things for aunt and uncle last night. So when I came home late without them, Uncle kind of lashed out at me and beat me up." He tried to grin again, but it just kind of fell flat and turned into a frown. "Yeah, that's all that happened. It doesn't hurt too much. I know they look big, but they don't hurt that much…"

Mion knew that last part was a lie. She wished everyone would just stop lying. It was getting annoying, and she really, really hated lies. However, the first part about not being able to get the things that his uncle and aunt had wanted was probably true, as she recalled him returning empty handed to their house. However, that would be the one thing Mion would think he would try to lie about. If he didn't have time, then what had he been doing that took him so long? And why was he covered in blood? Well, because he killed his aunt, obviously. Of course, Mion didn't say any of these thoughts out loud.

Instead, she moved onto the topic of his aunt in order to hear what he had to say about it, even though she knew the truth already.

"Satoshi-kun," she said gently, "about the subject of your aunt…"

He stiffened up, and for a moment, glanced at Mion with fear so wide in his eyes, almost as if he viewed her as some kind of predator. When Mion looked into those eyes of his, she could have swore she saw the image of herself reflected in them, but this her was different. Her eyes were glowing a sickly green and had slits in them, almost like a cat's eye, with glimmering bloodlust in them. Another noticeable feature was her malicious, taunting, evil grin showed off what seemed to be the points of sharp fangs. She shook that out of her head, wondering what in the world her imagination was coming up with now. It wasn't the time to come up with odd images.

Satoshi calmed down quickly. "Oh, yeah. I don't know what happened, I think she must have been out for her weekly Saturday Night forest walk, and maybe someone was drunk or not in the right mind or something and bashed her," he said a little too casually, though what wasn't causal contained shakiness and nervousness, probably because he knew the truth and didn't want to be exposed.

_ It's okay, you don't have to lie to me,_ Mion wanted to tell him, but she didn't. There was no point in saying that. It would increase his paranoia, and he probably didn't trust her anymore, especially after his confession…

"I think you need to get your mind off of things. Do you want to go on a walk with me, like we used to?" she asked, smiling. "Those always cheered us both up."

The last walk they had had together was when Mion had pried a love-struck Satoshi off of her, telling words of rejection to him. She could remember the coursing pain in his eyes, and the tears that had just barely begun to form before he had run off from her. It was not the most pleasant image that she had from their walks. She could, however, remember some of their better times. …No, that was also a lie. She really couldn't. That was the only thing that came to mind when she thought of their old walks, and the times they spent together…

With just one look at Satoshi, Mion could tell that he felt the same exact way. How could he possibly forget how his crush had pushed him off of her, and rejected her with words that were so painful to hear? It was impossible to remember the good now. All that seemed to exist was the bad.

But much to her surprise, Satoshi did not decline the invitation. "That sounds like a good idea, I think that's what we need to do."

Mion nodded. This could either turn out fine, or completely horrific. For some reason, Mion leaned towards the horrific side of things. Really, why would she look towards the positive these days?

The two friends set off further into the woods and down the paths, though none of them said anything to each other. This was a very uneasy walk, Mion decided, only after a few minutes of walking. It was hard to spend a moment like these between the two of them when the memories of her rejection were both strong in their minds, and when everyone else around them was suffering. How was it possible just to forget and ignore the world around them when everything was going wrong?

But, nevertheless, they tried to cheer each other up. When a few minutes had gone by, Mion decided it was more awkward to not say anything than to say something. "I think that the sky is pretty today," she said, deciding on a random subject to distract him with. "There really isn't a cloud in the sky and the sun is shinning right down on us. Before you know it, the temperatures will drop right down, and it'll be autumn, or maybe even winter."

However, what she believed to be a little demon in her mind jabbed at her and reminded her that the autumn may not even come. Mion told it to shut up, but she doubted it. There was going to be an autumn, she reassured herself, and most certainly a winter to follow that…

"You know, when it's winter, we should all build huge forts and have a snow fight. I think that you would be good at that for some reason, Satoshi-kun," she said, though she doubted it. He would probably lose against most people in the club when it came to that sort of thing, really. But there was no time to be honest with him, even though she hated lies. If they were needed, then so be it.

"That sounds fun," Satoshi muttered, though the tone in his voice was dull, and an unheard voice seemed to be shouting out that winter wouldn't come for him, and that he would not be there to make the snow forts in the first place. Mion knew that unheard voice was correct, but she didn't want to admit it to herself. She then noted that, for someone who began to hate lies, she was a hypocrite. "I think that you would be good, Shion. You and Mion can team up; I think you would be unbeatable then. And you know what else I think? Satoko would be the best at that. She would be unbeatable… With her traps, she could send everyone else's fort tumbling back to the ground where it came from." There was a sad smile on his face as he spoke them, as if he knew that it would happen, but he would not be there to see it. "That's right. She's going to be so happy now…" he whispered, his voice sounding sort of like he was in some kind of trance. "She's going to love it so much from now on… she's going to be happy with the games from now on. There's no more aunt to bother her… no more of her… aha…"

An alarm in Mion's head told her to change the subject. "So, have you heard? Onee is good at making cookies."

…What kind of subject was that?

"I like cookies. I'm sure Satoko would enjoy them, too…" he muttered, once again looping back to Satoko. "She'll love them, so much… she'll be so happy…"

Another louder alarm burst into her head, this time one that was glaring into her ears, screeching against her sensitive eardrums. "Yes, and the aquarium. I heard a nearby town is opening an aquarium!" she blurted out randomly. She had to come up with something, even if it was completely random and out of nowhere.

"Satoko said that her favorite kind of fish to see were sharks. Ahaha, she thinks they're kind of cool," he muttered.

As if the alarm wasn't loud enough, Mion felt like her eardrums had been ripped open by an echoing, blazing screech that then caused blood to leak out of them. Something was really wrong… something was _horribly _wrong.

"Satoshi-kun, that way, I like that way better," Mion said, pointing towards another pathway that led to the Furude Shrine, trying to distract him in some way. "That's a good path. I think I like the Furude Shrine." _You think you like it? Good job, Sonozaki Mion. _Her words didn't matter too much, though. She just needed to focus on getting this boy's mind on something else…

Satoshi snapped out of his thoughts. "Huh? Oh, okay. I like the Furude Shrine too, let's go that way. Besides, the murder site is over… there…" he gulped. A single hand went up to his throat, and when Mion caught his movement, she grabbed him by the bruised wrist, accidently causing him to cry out in pain. His cry sounded like the dying shriek of a chicken, and when he looked at her, he had such horror in his eyes that it seemed like he was staring at someone who was after him, ready to kill.

"S-Sorry! That was an accident!" she apologized Mion shakily as she released his wrist. "Anyways, let's get moving!"

Satoshi nodded.

For some reason, Mion found herself walking more urgently towards the Furude Shrine, and with every step, she felt the need to walk faster, and faster, and faster… Something in her mind was telling her to go faster, and that if she didn't, then Satoshi was doomed. She hardly realized that she was running after walking about a quarter of the way down the path, and that Satoshi had begun to run to keep up with her, too.

Perhaps it was better that way, because the were both so focused on running that they forgot why they were running in the first place, or in Mion's case, that she was even running.

"Slow down, Shion!" shouted Satoshi. "You're going way too fast!"

Her body halted, and that was the moment that she fully realized her actions. Her face flustered in embarrassment, and she could only grin sheepishly. "Ahaha, racing contest?"

Satoshi looked puzzled for a few moments, but then returned with a cheesy grin. "Well, next time, just announce it first."

Mion smiled awkwardly. "Aha, okay, yeah… Anyways, racing contest two!" Mion burst out at what felt to her like the speed of light. As she ran, more thoughts filled her head, taunting her. _This is your last chance with him, Sonozaki Mion. Houjou Satoshi is doomed… he's going to leave… and there's nothing you can do. Hehe… _Mion could only whisper the word "no," off her lips as her legs ran faster and faster.

Poor Satoshi couldn't keep up. By the time she was worn out, they were just right away from the Furude Shrine.

"Man, you're fast…" Satoshi commented, trying to catch his breath.

However, Mion was just having a hard time recalling why she decided to run so fast in the first place. It was faster than she had ever run before, faster than any contest from before. Was it just because she wanted to win? No…. that couldn't be it. It was because…

"We're here now, though. What do you want to do?" Satoshi asked. "Do you want to go up there? It's a nice field." His arm reached out and his finger pointed towards the grassy field around the Furude Shrine, which looked awfully relaxing to Mion for some reason…

"Yeah," Mion said, "I think that we just need to relax."

Satoshi nodded in agreement. "Aha, I think so, too. After all…" his tone got oddly dark and fearful again, and that's when another stab of pain took Mion. "…Satoko would love that. She really would… she would love to be here. Aha…"

Mion could only stare in shock as Satoshi's tired eyes, and at all the stress that had piled up in them. There was also a hint of what Mion could only describe as psychosis swirling about in his eyes, and rushing through his body as his hands formed tight fists. She opened her mouth to respond, but all it did was remain partially open in a gap. She couldn't speak.

However, someone else did. Someone unexpected and startling, that was.

"Well, hello there, you two!" a voice burst out.

Both Satoshi and Mion whipped around to see a police officer (Mion didn't recognize him) looking down at the two of them. "Sonozaki-san and Houjou-san, yes? We've been looking for you, Houjou-san. We needed to ask you a few questions…"

Mion looked up at the police officer, instantly realizing what the man wanted. He was smirking a bit as he looked towards Satoshi, probably thinking that he had caught the culprit for sure.

"What…do… you… want… me… for…?" Satoshi's nervous voice choked out in clumps.

"Just to talk a bit about your aunt and where you were last night. If I heard correctly before from your uncle, you were supposed to be out buying things from the store for him, but for some reason you came home empty handed two hours later with the excuse that you didn't have enough time?" the police officer recalled, still wearing that awfully dark smile on his face. Perhaps it wasn't even dark, but to Mion, it sure seemed like it was taunting her... and she was sure Satoshi felt the same way.

Satoshi took a few steps back, looking like he wanted to run away right at that moment. But there was nothing he could do, and Mion knew there wasn't anything she could do, either. She just had to let the officer take him.

After all, what came next was inevitable.

_~~~~X~~~~_

The next time they met up was shortly after, when Satoshi had finished being questioned. He was walking down the paths close to the Furude Shrine when Mion caught up to talk to him a bit about what had happened, and what they had questioned him about. They had decided to walk closer to the Shrine, and up to the grassy field they had planned to go to before.

"They just wanted to know where I was and how I felt towards her and all of that," Satoshi explained. "Nothing serious."

_Liar _a voice in Mion's head screeched out. However, she managed to keep her mouth closed for the moment before thinking up another response. "Oh, that's fine then. I guess they have to find out who did it now, huh?" she said casually, as if she had no idea that it was Satoshi who had killed his aunt. "Maybe it's connected to whoever killed Uncle Kurou?"

Satoshi blinked. "Who?"

"Uncle Kurou, my great uncle. He had been murdered a while before I transferred here. I don't know much of the details, but I think they could be related." No, they weren't in the slightest. There was no way that Satoshi killed him, but she was using it as a way to make him relax a bit, as if to convince him that she really thought that he was innocent.

A look of relief seemed to paint across his face, and that's how Mion knew her lying worked. "Ahah, yeah, I guess. They just need to investigate more, I bet…"

They reached the Furude Shrine area, which was bustling with people at this time. Mion looked at all the people and wondered if they were feeling all the horrors too, or if it was just her and her friends who were being affected by the horrors around them. They all seemed so genuinely happy as they talked with each other, laughing out loud in a way that Mion knew wasn't fake, simply by the fact that she hadn't heard laugher like that in a while. They really did seem to be happy… were they just completely oblivious, or was it just her friends who felt the horrors and were affected by them in the first place? Maybe things just didn't concern them. …How could they be so casual?

"Hey, Satoshi—"

When Mion turned to the boy, however, she saw fear in them like no fear she had ever felt before, no fear that she had ever seen reflected in them before. It was just like the image she saw in his eyes before, but this time, _worse._ It was as if everyone reflected in them had been transformed into horrible monsters right before him, and they were now staring at him like he was some sort of snack. It was like all the horrors of the world had been placed before him and thrown right at him, stabbing at him one by one, tearing at them with their sharp claws and hungry fangs, piece by piece, bit by bit…

"N-No… that lady… she looks just like my aunt!" screeched Satoshi, pointed towards a woman in the group of laughing people. However, when Mion went to inspect the woman, she found that she looked nothing like his aunt. She seemed to be similar in age, but that was the only similarity. Everything else right down to her eye color was different, and yet…

"That woman, too!" shouted Satoshi, "and that one, too! She's my aunt, too! T-They're all my aunt… no… but she's dead…" He stepped backwards, one of his feet taking such a deep step back that it slid in the dirt, creating a short cloud of dust. His breathing became heavy, as if he had just come out of a marathon. His whole body was heaving up and down and up and down… and Mion just stood there and watched it.

"Satoshi-kun!" she screeched out to him, pushing all her force in her voice. "That woman's not your aunt. And that one's not, either! See, that one is blonde, and the other one has black hair, not brown! You're not thinking right!" She glanced to the group quickly, taking several steps backwards into the woods so that they were a good distance away from them.

But it was as if she were mute. He did not hear her, and he continued to stare down everyone in the crowd, and his breaths did not relax. "But… she's dead. I-I know she is! I checked her pulse!" he screamed out. "I know she's dead, I know she's dead… I made sure she was dead… the bat hit her too many times for her not to be dead… there was too much blood… too much for her not to be dead…" he heaved, each sentence relying on another heavy breath he puffed out. "A-And yet… S-Shio-…"

He whipped around and looked at his friend, but when he did, his eyes only grew wider. And that was when she saw it, yet again. The demon reflected in his eyes, the demon she knew wasn't her. Yet, the piercing, glowing green stare that the other her gave her through the reflection was almost enough to make her heart stop it was so icy cold. The fangs felt like they were ripping her up just by looking at them, and then there were the claws that were slowly reaching toward her, the tips shining with the glint of their sharpness… _Oh god. _Now, Mion too was afraid. Afraid of what Satoshi saw.

"N-No, you're not S-Shion! You're something else!" he yelled out. He backed up, this time into a tree, causing him to briefly whip around and scream, though he stopped when he realized it was just a tree. His whole body was still heaving up and down with the fear, and looked like it wasn't going to stop. He moved his head back towards Mion, again almost robotically. "I know now… this is an 'Onikakushi' isn't it? You're the demon who has come to take me!" he screamed out.

Now, Mion knew that Satoshi was completely out of his mind. Before, there had been some sense in his words, but now… all that was coming out was complete and utter gibberish that would probably make the normal Satoshi's eyes roll. And yet… There he was, staring her down like she was some kind of bloodthirsty fiend ready to rip him apart.

"Satoshi-kun!" screamed out Mion, using all the voice she could let out of it. She knew it was hopeless, she knew it was futile. Yet, there was a part of her on the inside, perhaps the part of her that had once been better known as the true Sonozaki Mion, who was nagging her, telling her that she desperately needed to save him somehow. And now, she was listening to that side. "They're not your aunt! I'm not a demon! You're just not thinking right, and you're seeing things! Just listen and you'll see!" she yelled to him.

But Satoshi didn't seem to hear. He still looked at her with those wide, purple eyes of his, and Mion saw that demon reflected in them grow more fierce, with the malice intensifying with each breath the demon took, steam rising from her mouth and grazing the tips of her fangs. "No… You're going to steal me away… No… No…. Get away from me!" He shouted. Without thinking, Satoshi grabbed onto a branch on the ground and held it in front of him defensively, as if the object was ten times more powerful than it truly was. "Don't take me away! I won't lose to you!"

"SATOSHI!" screamed Mion again. At that moment, an image of the happy, smiling Satoshi that she always knew appeared clear in her head, almost like a perfect photograph. Why, why did these memories have to come back now? Why couldn't they have come back before? Why was it only now she could push the thought of his rejected confession away? "Don't do this, damn it! I'm really Shion, look at me! Look at my eyes, Satoshi!" she pleaded, desperation pouring out into her voice. "I'm not a demon, Satoshi-kun. _It's ME! _You know, your Sonozaki Shion! The one who you used to love!" she heaved out. She searched desperately for a sign of that old Satoshi in his eyes, of the reflection of the true her. But there was none of that. Just the terrifying, twisted demon she knew she wasn't.

"GET AWAY FROM ME! I WON'T BE TAKEN AWAY BY THE LIKES OF A DEMON LIKE YOU!" he screamed out with such fury in his voice that it tore it right up, taking over any other emotion may be within him, along with the remains of the Satoshi Mion knew so well. The image of his smiling self was slashed into pieces by the sharp claws of the demon Mion knew that Satoshi was imagining, doomed to never come back.

She knew it was hopeless, but the true Sonozaki Mion within her was determined to overcome. What was the point? She had asked herself this many times, but the club leader in her ripped that question apart so quickly that the demon her would be impressed. Yet, that hopelessness remained, fighting for dominance with every growing second. "_SATOSHI-KUN!" _she screeched out, putting every last breath in that voice, every last word that she had ever said to him, every last emotion they had ever shared. "Please, turn back to normal! See it's me! See I'm normal! _PLEASE!"_ Her thoughts shifted to the moment that Satoshi had told her how happy he was for bringing Satoko back to her, and then how protective he had gotten of Satoko when she was hurt… That was the real Satoshi. What she wanted back. That was what lit her next breaths, which would have probably just been a few wordless chokes if it weren't for that flame of a memory. "COME BACK TO ME, SATOSHI-KUN! Just look at me! ...See me! And... k-know that I'm not what you're seeing!"

It seemed as if the side of her that was the current Sonozaki Mion was correct, though, as Satoshi just lunged at her with the stick in hand. He roared out as he smashed her in the head with it, pushing her to the floor with such brutal strength that it made her cough out. He hit her with that stick over and over again, and even though the stick barely hurt her, the fact that the previous, smiling Satoshi from her memories was gone now was _ripping_ her to shreds, tearing at every fiber in her being. The side of her who had given up hope was now strangling the old Sonozaki Mion, holding a knife in one hand that she knew would soon be in the other's stomach. Knowing this, she tried to heave out another plead to him to convince him, but the hopeless side of her had taken over too far now. Her hopeless failures seconds before flashed in her mind, as well as all the words and ways she tried to get through to him.

Satoshi was an irreplaceable member of the club. She couldn't lose him again! But what in the world was she going to say?

And as she thought of all the powerful words she had said before to convince him that didn't work, her mind scrambled desperately with each heavy breath and smash of Satoshi's stick for something to say to him, something that would tear him away from this hallucination and bring back the Satoshi everyone loved. However, the image of the hopeless her with her fingers snaked tightly around the neck of the club leader Sonozaki Mion popped up, and she realized that the knife was just about plunged in, and that she was on her final breathes before finally running out of them. Her mind was at a loss, and in a mixture of hopelessness, desperation, and fear, there was only thing she could find coming out of her mouth.

"PLEASE!" she screamed. "PLEASE, JUST PLEASE BELIEVE ME!" she pleaded to him with the final strength that she had. "_PLEASE, SATOSHI-KUN, PLEASE_!" Tears rolled from her eyes down to her cheeks, and she screamed that one word over and over again, as if it was the only thing she knew how to say. With each scream, hopelessness began to take over, and yet, her voice became more desperate, more pleading…

And when she could plead no more, she saw the hopeless side of her transform into the demon that Satoshi saw and rip the old her into pieces, burying her fangs into her, tearing at every single last piece of flesh until red blood caked every part of her. And with a dying shriek, Mion knew that the old her had died, never to come back.

Now, her screams were just helpless sobs. She couldn't speak anymore. There was truly nothing she could do, truly nothing she could change… this was fated.

The only thing that stopped Satoshi was the snapping of his stick, and the crying of a nearby higurashi cicada that seemed to startle him for one reason or another. He shrieked out and stumbled away, screaming something about how no demon could get him, about how she, the demon, would never take him away…

It took minutes for Mion to stand up on her wobbly feet. She was barely bruised, but beaten. She was barely scratched, but bleeding. She was barely wounded, but hurting. She dragged herself to her house slowly, and by the time she got there, her mind had become just a mess of thoughts.

The only thing that she could think of when she got home was what her body did on it's own. She dragged herself over to the phone, and quickly dialed a number she knew all too well. She held the receiver close, and when she heard a voice on the other end, she spoke.

"Hello, is this the clinic? It's about Houjou Satoshi…"

_~~~~X~~~~_

The next day, Mion found herself at the police station, seated in front of a rather old policeman. He was going through a few notes he had taken, and he was definitely taking his sweet time. Mion was irritated, impatiently tapping her foot down on the tiled floor beneath her.

"What is it?" she growled.

The police officer's head shot up, looking a bit surprised by her attitude. "Sorry. From what I'm reading, you were with Houjou Satoshi before, weren't you?"

Mion nodded. "Yes, I was…"

"And that time after he was released was definitely the last time that you saw him?" asked the man as he looked through his notes.

Mion hated all these questions. She just nodded, growling a little bit. "That was the last time I saw him," she told him, irritated by the very memory. It was still too fresh in her mind, and it still stung. "Why in the world do you want to know, anyways?" She had been in a bad mood since yesterday, and by now, Mion wasn't even trying to be polite with this policeman.

The police officer looking down at his notes, and he closed them with a sigh. "Well, that was the last time anyone ever saw him. Houjou Satoshi has gone missing."

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**I'm tired. Like, really tired. But I wanted to finish that chapter, because… I couldn't just leave it there, for one, plus I needed to look it over and… And wow, was that longer than I thought it would be. That last scene there with Mion vs. Freaking Out Satoshi wasn't there before, the whole "that woman looks like my aunt" thing was just going to be a passing comment as they walked to the police station, and then I moved it, and then it turned into that... I like it better that way, though. **

**I hope that my staying awake and writing this for you efforts proved to do something good. I'm just glad I got another chapter out this week. I need to speed up these chapters, or I'm never going to make it. Man, I'm really tired though. School has been getting better, but history is still a bit of a mess. Yeah, that's it, though. I'm tired… I'm going to go to bed now after uploading this quickly. Wow…**

**Thank you all for putting up with my updates and reading this. I love having readers... *yawn***

**~Crimso**


	34. Chapter 33: Hate

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Argh, you guys. I'm so sorry. School is just rough, there's lot that needs to be done, etc. Finals are crazy. I have a sore throat, so that's an indication I'm about to get annoyingly sick. ARGH. All notes about my life can be found down in Crimso's Corner. For now, enjoy the fanfic!**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Three: Hate_

The word that Satoshi had gone missing spread very quickly around Hinamizawa. Things like that never went hidden for very long, and Mion knew that this was no exception. Soon enough, just about everyone in the village was aware of the situation, and what they had thought had happened. Mion was very thankful that the doctors managed to get to him in time and before he had clawed his own throat out. It appeared as if Satoshi was in a safe coma for now.

It was just about the only thing people at school could talk about for obvious reasons. Mion had the relief of knowing that Satoshi was okay and just was in a coma, but she couldn't share that information with anyone else. Everyone else was scared out of their minds for what had happened to Satoshi, and a lot of them were shaken by it, especially her friends. Satoshi had always been an irreplaceable member of the club, after all.

"Where did he go?" Keiichi asked as he looked out the window of the classroom. "I know he killed his aunt, but…"  
>Rena held a finger to her mouth and shushed Keiichi, reminding him not to be so loud about the murder incident. It was obvious that it was Satoshi who did it, but it wasn't good to say such things out loud.<p>

"Perhaps he decided to run away and move to some place new. You know, some place where he wouldn't be stressed," Rena suggested.

"But why would he abandon Satoko, and right after he killed his aunt and destroyed the source of his stress?" Keiichi asked, glancing briefly towards the yellow-haired girl in the corner. She was still beaten pretty badly but had most of her wounds bandaged up, but the depression in her eyes seemed to have gotten worse despite the fact that her aunt was now dead and her uncle had left her.

Shion gritted her teeth together. "Isn't it obvious?" she blurted out, unable to control her temper. It seemed that she did that often these days. "Satoko was a source of stress, too! She was always clinging onto him, begging for him to protect her, when he too was hurt! She relied on him for every single little thing and pressured him into taking care of her. The selfish little brat couldn't even take care of herself…!" She seemed to have forgotten that Satoko was in the room with her, but Mion doubted that Satoko was listening to their conversation anyways. She looked pretty lost in her own thoughts.

Mion glared at Shion, silencing her. "Onee," she said sternly, "I thought we went over this. You're not allowed to say things like that, especially when it's not her fault! She was hurting as much as Satoshi was."

Shion grumbled. "Yeah right," she muttered underneath her breath as she turned her green gaze to Satoko. Her eyes rested on her with so much hate in them that Mion thought that Satoko would just drop dead on the spot, there and then. It reminded her a lot of how Shion saw Satoko in her world before and a little bit after Satoshi disappeared, and she supposed it was only natural that this Shion would react in the same way. However, something about it scared her out of her mind. A part of her mind was telling her that something was going to go horribly wrong… _again_.

What much more could go wrong, though? It seemed that everything that could possibly go wrong was going wrong already. Rika was depressed and so was Satoko, Satoshi was now missing, Shion had been acting funny as of recently (and rather angry too, especially towards Satoko), and Keiichi and Rena weren't really themselves despite things not going completely wrong for the both of them. What was going to happen now? Was someone going to break in and murder them all? Usually, she would doubt something like that, but right now, it didn't seem to be impossible for something like that to happen with all that had been going on around her.

Mion sighed as she looked down on her math sheet. There was no way she was going to bother with something like this now. It would just hurt her head and make her feel even worse about the situation, and the last thing she needed to be doing was math when she had worse problems to deal with. She had to wonder why Chie bothered assigning it in the first place… It wasn't ever going to get done, after all.

There was some talk over from Keiichi and Rena, though Mion could only pick up a little bit of what they were saying to each other. From what she could tell, they were talking about Satoko, and what they would do now that she didn't have Satoshi for her. Where would she live? Who would take care of her? The question of if Satoshi was going to come back came up several times, but Mion knew in her heart that there was no chance of him coming back anytime soon. Perhaps in a few years, maybe, but there was a chance that he may not be able to come back at all.

"I think she should go and live with one of us. It would make sense for us to care for her," Rena suggested.

"Yeah, but the problem is _who_ she is going to stay with. I mean, Rika-chan is her friend, but…" Keiichi stopped.

They all turned to look at Rika, who was as depressed and silent as usual. She too wasn't even bothering with her homework, which didn't come as a surprise to Mion. Who would be doing homework in a time like this? Rika was staring blankly at her sheet, not paying attention to anything in particular, but it was clear that she was suffering on the inside. Who wouldn't be suffering? Everything around them was seemingly going wrong, and with the Satoko and Satoshi matter, she would be surprised if she weren't acting like how she was now.

Things couldn't seem to get worse, Mion decided, but they were going to anyways.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Just before the end of school hit, Mion and Shion were called over by Rena and Keiichi to discuss some serious matters involving Satoko and what they were going to do now that Satoshi was gone. They had invited Rika to join the discussion too, and she had indeed joined, but all she was doing was sitting there looking like she was lost in her own mind, never to come out. Mion wondered if it would just be better to be lost in her own mind than in reality. Perhaps in her mind, Rika was thinking off a better place, a place that was much more relaxing than where she was… A place just like this world had been weeks before.

Mion wished things would just go back to normal. But now, with Satoshi gone and in a coma, there was no chance of him coming back again. With his disappearance went Mion's hope for the world and the chances of it ever going back to normal again. There was a chance things could get better after the abuse… If Satoshi hadn't killed his aunt, recovery was possible. Before then, it was possible to heal Rika, and to fix whatever about Rena that was making Mion feel uneasy. Satoshi's disappearance had bent the end of the line. There was now _nothing_ that could go right, _nothing _that could be done to fix up the previously bright and shimmering world.

"What we need to decide is where Satoko is going," Rena started up. "I know that she can't stay in her own house now. Her uncle is gone and she can't take care of herself. I think we need to consider all of our houses first before we decide on one, because there can be ups and downs and we really want Satoko to be happy."

"Hold on a moment, Rena," Keiichi said, stopping her in her tracks. "Who said that Satoshi wasn't coming back? Maybe he got lost in the woods or something. He could be back in a few days, or maybe even tomorrow. There's no indication that it's permanent."

Rena gave him a look, and though she was silent, all words that needed to be said were communicated to him. In her look, he could read words that told him that Satoshi really was gone, there was no way that he was going to come back. She knew it, and he did too. The fact that it occurred right after the death of his aunt had to be a part of it, and it was more likely than anything else to be that he ran far, far, far, away with no chance of returning to his town, where they would surely arrest him… At once, he understood, and the topic of that possibility was instantly dropped. It had been ridiculous in the first place to even hope for such a thing.

Shion clenched her fists into tight balls on the table, grinding her teeth together to the point where Mion was sure that they were going to shatter. "He can't just leave like that. That's not Satoshi-kun," she growled.

"Onee—" Mion tried to tell her gently.

"_That's not Satoshi-kun. He wouldn't run away,_" hissed Shion with venom of the most deadly type in her voice. "He wouldn't run away… but… if he truly did run away… he's going to come back for me…"

Mion shook her head gently. She didn't want to say much to her already enraged sister because she knew how much he meant to her, but there was nothing much that she could tell her to make her feel any better. What could she do? Did she just want her to lie and make something up? Wasn't lying even more painful than telling the truth? Well, perhaps it could make her feel better to tell her that Satoshi _would_ come back, that he _didn't_ abandon them, that he _was_ going to come home with a bright smile on his face, ready to join the group again. But, the truth was that he _wouldn't_ come back, that he _did_ abandon them, that he _wasn't_ going to come home with a bright smile on his face. There was no point in lying… she hated lying, anyways.

"No, that's not it," Shion said, interrupting anyone who was about to speak in response to her. "That's not it at all. I know. He did run away. But it wasn't my fault. And it wasn't his fault. It was _Satoko's_ fault. That little brat made him run away! She's so weak and pathetic! Relying on him for every single little thing, forcing him to do everything for her when he's suffering just as much…" Shion had so much rage in her eyes that Mion was sure that the roof would be on fire in any second.

"Onee…" Mion tried whispering to her sister once again. This again? It seemed that Shion would burst into one of these fits every single minute. There wouldn't be a second where she wasn't talking about Satoko, and about how she had been the reason why Satoshi had run away, and how it was her fault that he had left.

"Don't you try to deny it, Shion! You know it too!" snapped Shion, whirling around to face her sister with rage burning and glimmering in every glint of her green eyes. Mion felt like she was being set on fire staring into those eyes. "You know it was her fault too! You're just saying that because you don't want to be mean to _sweet,_ _angelic_ little Satoko." She snorted in disgust. "Just admit it. It's her fault and you know it. Rena-san knows it too, and so does Kei-chan. It's all Satoko's fault. Goddamn it… if only that little brat didn't exist. If only… heh, it would be all better then? It's the reason why he suffered all along after all…" At that moment, a flash of an idea sparked in Shion's eyes, one that was filled with darkness, and one that caused a particularly malicious smile to appear on her face. "Yeah, it's her fault. All along, it was her fault. The reason why he was suffering before, the reason why he could never feel good was because he wanted Satoko to have friends and because he was worried about her… and the reason why he broke now was because of her. She's the reason why… she's the reason why everything went wrong… If only… if only she never existed…"

If Mion had any more hope left, she would have felt it all die away. However, there was none left to die. Instead, a part of her inside seemed to yell out in alarm, while another part of her hissed at the other to accept it. There was nothing that this would change. Worse? Ha… as if things could get any worse... It caused her just to laugh mockingly at Shion's words, taunting her, as if to tell her that her attempts to lower her hope and makes things worse was just a pure comedy. She couldn't see any worse… it had already hit the bottom.

Rena held up a hand flat. "Stop it, Mi-chan."

Shion didn't listen to her, quite obviously. As if she would ever listen to Rena when she told her to do something like _that._

"And maybe, if Satoko wasn't such a pain in the first place, then Onee wouldn't have had to fix her… maybe she would have been nothing more of a friend to Satoshi. Ha… it's her fault too… it's her fault Satoshi cared for her instead of me, like he should have. _That brat messed everything up_," she hissed. Shion's nails seemed to twist into hideous, sharp claws and begin to scratch at the desk, tearing at the surface like some kind of wild animal. "She should have _never_ been born. Everyone would be happier without her… _Everyone…_"

"_Mi-chan!"_ hissed out Rena, silencing Shion right away. "You know, I was considering putting her in Mi-chan and Shi-chan's house since it's so big, but I think we can cross that off of our list. I hope you don't mind, Shi-chan," she said.

Mion nodded. "I certainly don't. Bad idea in the first place…" She turned towards Shion, staring at her and at the venom that still remained in her eyes and tone. It was horrifying to see her sister like that, but at the same time, it barely fazed Mion. There was just nothing that could draw her attention anymore… She was already broken.

"Right, so we could let her stay at my place," Rena brought up, though she still left a cautious eye on Shion, glancing to her every so often so to make sure she didn't get up and kill Satoko on the spot. "But you know, I think it could be better if we sent her to Keiichi-kun. I mean, his space is a lot bigger and it would be a lot more fun. I just have a small house and it's not really best for her. I could imagine her having more fun over with Keiichi-kun."

Keiichi looked unsure. "Are you sure about that? I honestly think it would be better with you. You're a really good care taker and all, and I think you would be better for her—"

"—Maybe, but your family is a lot better, I would think," Rena interrupted.

Keiichi scratched his head, still unsure about what Rena was saying. Really, this was a tough decision.

"She can stay with me," Rika interrupted, which caused everyone to turn towards her with shock in his or her eyes. How long had it been since they had heard her speak? "Satoko is my best friend. She can stay with me. My house isn't the best, but we can get along and have a lot of fun." She didn't sound all that happy though, but it was probably just from the stress that was going around her. Perhaps being with Satoko would cheer her up just a bit. …Mion was surprised that she even thought positively for a second, but really, that was just about the best that could happen.

"Are you sure?" Rena said, sounding unsure. "Rika-chan, you've been—"

"—I know how I've been recently, but it's fine. I'm happy to spend time with her." Rika tried to smile, she really did, but all that came out was the ghost of what was meant to be a smile. She could only maintain a weak, clearly faked one for around a second before it died away without a trace. "I'm sure that I can make her feel better. It might make me feel better, too."

Keiichi looked to Rena. "Do you think…?"

"Rika-chan, do you know if you'll both be able to take care of yourselves?" Rena asked the girl. "It's going to be hard with the two of you… and you're so young…"

Rika gave Rena a look that read, "do you really think that I wouldn't be able to? I know how to take care of myself." However, the words that came out were different. "We can do it. It will be just fine, I assure you." Rika stood up from her seat and pushed it in. "That's how it's going to be. I'll go talk to her now. You can continue on and finish your math homework or something in the last fifteen minutes of class. I've got the rest of this dealt with."

With that, the blue-haired girl walked away, leaving Keiichi and Rena looking at each other in confusion. Well, that solved that, they supposed. Mion glanced over to her sister, who was still tapping her fingers on the desk with a look of annoyance resting on her face. At least Satoko didn't have to suffer through another night with both her and Shion again… that would be brutal.

The end of school came fast enough. Satoko accepted Rika's idea, though she was too broken to do much beside nod.

"We're going to be fine," assured Rika as she stuffed a few things into Satoko's bag, "I know we're going to be. Aren't we, Satoko?" she asked, turning towards her friend.

Satoko just gave a small, somewhat robotic and stiff nod.

Rika tried her best to smile again, but it fell flat right away. "We're going to be very happy. I'll introduce Satoko to Mr. Cat. Perhaps she'll like Yuki the bear as well. They'll become best friends in no time at all, I promise you." She stuffed a book into her backpack, giving the others a nod. "So come on, Satoko. We'll have some fun."

Satoko nodded much like she did before.

Rika lead Satoko out of the room slowly, and soon enough, the yellow-haired girl left the room. Her movements, however, were slow, and Mion knew that Satoko was far from being fixed. Rika was a good friend and they had fixed her before, but for some reason, Mion doubted that they would ever be able to help Satoko in this state. Not even Rika could do something like that to her in this dark world, where even she had lost hope…

Satoko and Rika left the room, and with that, so did Keiichi, Rena, and Shion. Mion stood there for a while; just sighing as she thought of how this world had changed. How could something so beautiful become like this…?

She sighed again. Well, no point in dwelling on it. She should get home soon, anyways. She reached for her bag once again and slung it over her shoulder, then walking towards the door.

However, right as she was about to leave, it seemed as if Rika had just appeared out of thin air. She was standing before Mion, a dead serious look in her eyes as she looked right up at the older and much taller girl.

Mion blinked and wondered where she had come from, but before she could ask anything, Rika spoke.

"I warned you," she said darkly, sternly, and full of what seemed to be anger, which was something odd for Rika. "You, Sonozaki Shion, are a fool."

Then, she turned around and left without another word.

_~~~~X~~~~_

It seemed to be as Mion thought, as after a few days, Satoko didn't seem to getting much better. Three days later and she hadn't changed a bit from being with Rika. Mion could recall her broken look in class today as she stared down at her paper with no sign of even bothering to start her work. Really, there was no hope of getting her fixed. Rika was much the same. Mion had thought that maybe she would feel a bit better from being with Satoko, but it seemed that it wouldn't be true…

Shion was pacing endlessly about their room as Mion lay on the futon, muttering things under her breath that Mion couldn't quite catch. The moonlight was reflecting on her through the open window, glistening off of her green locks of hair. It was getting rather late, wasn't it?

"She's really no better," Shion finally said out loud, so that Mion could actually understand her. "Yeah, Satoko's gotten no better… no different… hasn't learned from her mistake. The little brat…"

Mion said nothing in response.

Shion clenched her fists and looked down at the floor as if she was having an intense staring contest with it. She stood there just like that for a few seconds before whipping her head straight up and staring at Mion. "I'll be back. I need to take a walk," she told her sister. She didn't even wait for Mion to respond to that. Instead, she just stormed out of the room and slid the door shut without another word.

Mion sighed. Well, taking a walk would be of some good for her, she was sure. She just needed some time to calm down, and a nice walk would certainly help. They usually helped for her, anyways.

Mion didn't want to walk right now, though. Sleeping would work better for her. The last two times she tried to talk a walk to calm herself down, they ended up going horribly wrong…

She flickered off the lights and tucked her head underneath the warm blankets of her futon. Yes, sleep was just what she needed…

Unfortunately, it seemed that her body just didn't want to go to sleep. Minutes passed. Hours passed. Nothing could make her fall asleep. She was just lying there with her eyes closed, uncomfortably shifting positions every now and then as if to help her sleep a little bit better, though it never really worked. Her head was spiraling with thoughts from the days before, and it really was getting to look like she wasn't going to get any sleep at all.

She should just give up. Sleep was a thing of the past, anyways. Why had she even bothered hoping to get some sleep in her condition? No one could sleep with thoughts like the ones Mion had in her mind. There was just too much going on around her to let her sleep comfortably in her own bed…

Her eyes opened briefly to look at the clock on the wall. It was just passed midnight now. _Great._ She shut her eyes again and shifted into a new position, this time really focusing on just sleeping. Maybe if she thought hard enough, she would fall asleep…

The door to her room creaked open, and for a moment, she was confused. Oh yeah, Shion had left a while back. But… that was before when she wasn't even trying to go to sleep. She had been trying to go to sleep for hours now, so that meant Shion had been out for a while. Well, she supposed that a nice long walk was good, and if she wanted to be out for a few hours in the dark night, then so be it. Whatever calmed her down, she supposed.

Shion's footsteps creaked against the wooden ground and came to a sudden halt by her futon. Mion heard shifting, and soon enough, she could feel Shion's breath on her neck. What in the world was Shion doing? Probably just checking to see if she was asleep, Mion assumed. She didn't think much about it and tried her best to be convincingly asleep, though with how things had been for her recently, she doubted that it was working.

However, Shion did not move. Suddenly feeling an uneasy beating in her heart, Mion slowly opened up an eye to take a peak at her sister. What was she…?

The first thing that greeted her was her sister's oddly taunting, malicious eyes staring down at her, stabbing her right through the chest and stunning her. The second thing that greeted her was her sister's pearly white grin, which contained not joy in it, but pure sadism, freezing her up and causing her heart to pound into a warning cry. The third, final thing that greeted her were the metal prongs that moved to the back of her neck, just before a charge of electricity so powerful that it caused Mion to shriek out burst into her, causing her vision to turn to black.

The last thing she heard was her sister's cruel, twisted laughter echoing throughout her head before all her senses ceased to work.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner v.3: SUPER LONG EDITION  
><em>THIS IS REALLY LONG GUYS. But please read it all. It's important.<em>**

**I wasn't going to write this tonight. But I did, so here it is. I'm so sorry guys. I can't keep up with everything at once anymore… finals are a lot of work. They haven't even started yet, and review hasn't either, but we still have a week for a whole bunch of last tests and work to get done, including a grammar test, a Shakespeare lines test (I have thirty-seven lines (! ! !) ) and a take-home math test. We are also working on our history final in the meantime, which is not so much a final as a really huge, stressful project that involves a lot of time and effort. I can't keep up with everything at once. I hope you understand… I'm just so sorry.**

**I don't know if I can get this done in time anymore. Let's just hope for the best for now.**

**Another thing that has come up recently is the topic of August. I have no idea what we're doing for the second half of summer break, but if not much, then I'm going to be writing some fanfiction during the time period. Now… something came up a few days ago that I spent some time thinking about, and I still have to think about it a bit, but do let me know what you think if you have a strong opinion. I realized a while ago that the fanfiction I'm writing during the days at camp—Truth's Blade—is definitely not going to be finished in the time I have at camp. First off, I have to type up what I wrote at camp. Second off, I can't write too much when I'm writing by hand. Third off, it's long. I'm not going to handwrite the whole thing in a month. That means Eyes of Green and Truth's Blade are going to be written at the same time. Now, that would be fine, but I feel like it would be too much. Next year is going to be super stressful for me in terms of work, and I think just knowing I have to write both Eyes of Green **_**and**_** Truth's Blade is going to make me feel really pressured. So here's the problem: If I am only going to write one of them first and then move onto the next, it **_**will **_**be Truth's Blade because it'll be around the length of WAN and take less time to complete than Eyes of Green, which is **_**four times**_** as long as Green-Eyed Demon. Now, I can do this, but I promised you Eyes of Green in August, and I know you all want to read it so much…**

**Another thing that's just personal on my part, but Truth's Blade is not a Higurashi fanfiction. I want to write it because I have written Higurashi for a year now, and soon enough, it'll be two years. It would be nice to have a change and write something new. Not that I don't like Higurashi anymore… I **_**love**_** Higurashi to death, but you know, I've been using these characters for so long. So I feel like it would be nice for me to write Truth's Blade. Nice and refreshing. Something new. I may be more motivated to write it knowing that it's just fresh, new material.**Another thing to consider with Truth's Blade is that I'm writing for a completely different fandom with different people reading it. This fandom is _extremely popular_ though the characters I am using are Ensemble Darkhorses with minor roles, so I don't know how much attention I will get, etc. It's a new experiment.****

**However, you all want to read Eyes of Green. While I'm going to mostly have to make this decision on my own because I know you'll all say Eyes of Green, I have a few options. One, I write Truth's Blade first. It gives me time to shift to another fandom and do something new for a change before coming back fresh and ready to take on Higurashi. I won't be as motivated to write Eyes of Green if I'm moving right to it, so it won't be as good. It also gives me a bit less stress, too. Two, I write them at the same time and write each depending on what mood I am. This can get extremely stressful for me, but everyone is satisfied in this case… unless I get completely stressed out, then I won't be. Of course, you might want to read Truth's Blade. In that case, good! I appreciate it! But I need to work this out. Do you have any strong feelings? Please share them with me. I have to mostly work it out on my own because of what I said before about you all wanting to read EOG, but I need to ask.**

**Thus concludes the page-and-a-half long Crimso's Corner. Wow.**

**~Crimso**


	35. Chapter 34: Slaughter

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I had finals last week and school just got out today, which is why I haven't updated. I needed to work on finals. I was going to update, but… finals called D:. Camp is in a few weeks. I'm really, really excited! But first, I have to finish this.**

**I know it's been a while, so it might do some good to look back on the last chapter if you need to.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Four: Slaughter_

The first thing that Mion was able to feel when she regained consciousness was the horribly empty cold that was surrounding her. The air was chilling, and the floor beneath her was by no means comfortable. For some reason, she could remember a time where she felt just like this, but she pushed that off. If there was one thing that she knew, it was where she was… and it was a place that she certainly didn't want to be in.

Her green eyes drifted open, and all she could detect, at first, was the horrible darkness the room contained. She forced herself up to her knees as she looked about to confirm where she was, and when she did, she felt a lurching darkness spiral about in her heart. It hurt and it burned her on the inside, but a part of her reminded her that there was little pain that could be done to her at this point, even by that awful feeling in her chest. She was located in the basement of the Sonozaki Manor, which could easily be called a torture chamber. Yes, that's what it was. In the old days, the Sonozaki family dragged enemies down here and tortured them. She had heard rumors that her grandmother had tortured her enemies down here when she was younger, but she brushed all that off as a lie. Still, though, the basement did contain the needed torture equipment to conduct such a murder. She was locked within a dark cell, and she knew that there was no way to get out of it. Banging and bashing against it was useless, her mind concluded without her even trying.

She couldn't see anyone, but she remembered well who her attacker was. _Shion._ She remembered the glow of her green eyes in the night, and how her smile seemed to show off canine fangs that were way too long and much too sharp to be considered the teeth of a human… She cringed and shook her head as she remembered where she had last seen that image. _The demon in Satoshi-kun's eyes. _...No, that was crazy…

Where was Shion, and what was she planning? No, that was silly of her to ask. Obviously, she was here in the torture chamber because—

"Rion," Mion spoke out into the darkness, her voice silent but shaken with fear. No, this could not be happening… She had seen the terror of Satoshi's disappearance before, as well as the horror of Satoko's abuse, and she was used to Rika's dark personality, but this was unheard of. Shion wasn't… she wasn't really going to kill her, was she? "Rion, are you there?"

Rion faded in, a depressed and somewhat guilty expression plastered across her face. "I'm sorry, Shion. If I could help you, I would, but I'm only—" Rion seem to choke and couldn't finish the sentence, though Mion knew that it wasn't likely that she had actually. She was a spirit, after all.

_A powerless goddess_, Mion finished in her mind. That was all Rion was. Just a powerless god who had to watch down on her people as they were torn apart by each other, as she suffered through countless numbers of horrid, twisted events after another horrid, twisted event… She could only stand there and watch as Mion was ripped apart by those around her, as the changes around her began to destroy the brave, strong girl that she was known as and admired for being. There was truly nothing she could do to stand in the way and help her, and nothing she could do to allow the girl to escape from that horrid darkness enveloping her mind and soul…

"There really is nothing you can do," whispered Mion, "right?"

Rion nodded her head slowly. "Really and truly."

"There really is nothing you can do," Mion whispered again, this time sounding a bit irritated. "…Right?"

Rion looked confused, and she nodded her head again. "There really isn't anything I can do."

"I said," hissed Mion, clenching her fists together, "there really _isn't_ anything that you can do, is there? Despite the fact that you're the god of Hinamizawa, who is supposed to be all powerful, who we are supposed to respect…" She turned towards the goddess, worlds of rage burning in her eyes. "Why do we worship you, then, if you can't save me from this darkness?" she snapped out, the anger in her tone burning throughout her words. "Why? You can't save anyone, and we're kind enough to build shrines for you, to pray to you… and yet, you're just a worthless god who stands there and does nothing at all while your people burn and suffer! What the hell kind of god are you, anyways?"

Rion looked taken aback, and she took a few steps backwards, horror in her eyes. "No—"

"—You're worthless!" spat Mion, unable to contain her rage any longer. She would not believe that she had a goddess watching over her that couldn't do anything but watch as she burned in the suffering of those around her, and in her own suffering. "All you do is give me words like 'stay calm' or 'things aren't dark yet, keep a good attitude! We can fix things!' even though you know they're false, too! How the hell is that supposed to help me, huh?" she hissed at the goddess. "Hey, are you listening to me, Rion? Can you really not do anything, huh? Then why do you call yourself a god?"

Rion jumped and looked about frantically, surprised by the rage of the girl before her. "No, Shion-… You have to know that I really can't do anything. I don't have any powers! The other Oyashiros took them from me, you know that too! I told you all about that already…"

Mion knew that, all right, but she refused to let that get in her way. She was practically burning up in her own rage, and combined with the days of suffering she had spent and the fear that she now contained as she pictured her sister actually _murdering _her, she was practically unable to be stopped. "I can't believe it. Why the hell are you here, then? Why don't you just leave? !" snapped Mion. "I don't need you. I don't need you to linger here and tell me that things will be okay, because you know what? They won't be okay!" she screeched out. She paused for a moment as she allowed a few breaths to fill her lungs with air again. The image of her smiling sister popped up, and that was enough for the words to continue again. "My own sister is trying to kill me! My own freaking twin sister! How the hell are things going to get better, huh? What good are you going to do? If you were a god, you would be able to save me! If you were a god, you would be able to save Satoshi, and Satoko too! You would be able to save all of us. You, Rion, are not a god!"

Rion looked horrified at Mion's words, and she could see beads of tears beginning to form in her eyes, but Mion couldn't care less. She hesitated a bit, but finally, she spoke again. "I-I'm sorry…" was all that she could squeak out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." she repeated that over and over again until her voice faded into short squeaks, and then her body faded all together. Mion growled and grunted at the god, finding her a coward for running away like that. She just couldn't face the truth.

Mion whirled around and looked outside her cell. A part of her mind reminded her not to be mad at Rion and that all that was happening wasn't her fault, but the rage that consumed her pushed it away. She needed someone, _something _to blame, and right now, that someone was Rion. The image of her sister flashed in her mind, and what was sure to come next… It was all over. Her sweet, kind, caring sister that she treasured and loved with all of her heart was going to _murder_ her. The image of her sister that she imagined was wearing a sweet smile that Mion knew she would never see again, and that she knew had been replaced by that evil, sadistic grin of a killer that she had seen last night… _The smile of that demon…_

A part of her wanted Shion to take her life. Dying now would be better than suffering. But, another part of her reminded her that Shion was her sister, and that dying by the hand of her sister was the last way she wanted to go out. Shion, who had once been the sweet, kind sister who she had grown up with, and who she had known since even before her birth, was going to be the one to kill her, the one who would take her very life away… She was born into this world with Shion, and it seemed like she was going to go out of it with Shion, as well.

She thought nothing could break her, but the thought of her own sister taking her life was just _horrifying. _It ripped and tore and parts of Mion that she had thought could no longer be harmed, pouring out stinging, burning pain that filled her. She felt like screaming out and ramming her balled, fight fist into the wall, but she repressed it, and at the same time, caused the desire to do so to twist into horrid pain that twirled about her stomach and her very soul, ripping through every single last fiber of her being.

She felt completely useless. There was no longer anything she could do, either… just like Rion.

She said nothing as she heard one of the doors to another room being opened. Shion was humming a happy tune to herself as she twirled some jingling keys about. To Mion, her humming was not a joyful tune, but something deep, dark, and threatening. It felt like her way of mocking her, of walking right up to her face and spitting on it, telling her that there was nothing she could do now. She was in Shion's grasp now.

"Oh?" Shion's voice echoed out. "Awake, are we? Good, I was just getting a bit _bored _of waiting," she purred tauntingly, a sadistic grin growing on her face. She walked right over to the cage and bent down, looking at her sister with a soft smirk on her face. "Aw, look at you. All locked up and helpless. It's really too bad, sister, that this had to happen, but you have to be punished for what happened."

Mion gritted her teeth, and she had to force tears that she knew were coming to dry up before they even rolled out. "For what?" she managed to ask.

"Oh, don't tell me you don't know," Shion said, though she didn't sound surprised in the slightest. "It's really quite obvious, don't you think, sister?" She reached out through the bars of the cell and placed a finger underneath her sister's chin, tilting her head up so that she was forced to stare into the green, horrifying gaze of her sister. Where there was once the kindness and warmth she knew well, there was darkness, sadism, and malice. She searched desperately for some form of comfort and the old Shion, but there was nothing to be found. _Not even a scrap…_

"It's your fault, you know. About Satoshi-kun," Shion began to speak. "That poor, poor boy. His disappearance was your fault. He loved you, and he was relying on you to help him… you could have healed him easily, sister. But you so selfishly refused his cries for help and just left him there to suffer, hanging in darkness…" There was a spark of rage in Shion's eyes that ignited and burned into a wild fire within seconds. "YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM, YOU KNOW! YOU COULD HAVE. _BUT YOU DIDN'T_."

Mion tried to choke out words, but she could find none to even try to say. What Shion was saying… it wasn't true. Satoshi was doomed from the start, wasn't he? There was no way she could have helped, no way she could have saved him…

"If only…" hissed Shion with pure hatred in her voice, "if only he loved _me._ Then I would have held him in my arms and whispered that it was okay, that I would protect him and be there for him, and that I loved him. But no… he didn't love me. He loved _you_. You, sister… even though you knew how much he meant to me… you still made him fall in love with you." She clenched a fist and thrust it down to the ground in a fit of pure rage. "IT'S YOUR FAULT HE WENT MISSING! ALL YOUR FAULT! And I'm going to make you pay, sister. I'm going to make you feel all the pain he felt, and all the pain I felt. Do you know how heart broken I was when I heard he loved you instead of me? It was… horrible, sister. I felt it break. I felt the pain flow through my veins and _destroy _my heart, my dreams, my feelings… You stole him from me. You knew how much he meant to me, and yet…!" The finger placed on Mion's chin removed itself and slashed itself across her face along with the other four fingers on that hand, causing Mion to scream in surprise and panic.

Shion stood up, looking down at Mion with a stern look on her face. "Well, I suppose it's time to fix all that. But first, I have a little something _else_ to take care of before we get rid of you, hm?" She smirked with delight. "Oh, what fun it's going to be to see you writhe in pain on the ground as I take revenge for my Satoshi-kun… oh, Satoshi-kun!" She titled her head up and looked at the ceiling, then throwing her arms into the air. "Praise me! I'm taking out the ones that have cursed you, Satoshi-kun! Ahahahahahahahaha! Love me more than you loved her! Laugh with me as you watch the ones that made you suffer get torn into bits and bleed! Taste their blood! Ahahahaha…!"

Mion cringed. Who else could Shion be talking about? Wait a moment, it wasn't—It couldn't be—…

Shion whipped around. "Now, it's time for our first show. Watch, will you, oh dear sister? It's going to be so much fun… and even better with an audience. And know, sister, that you're next…"

She grinned wildly as she moved towards the wooden door to the other room, pulling it open without a thought. She left it wide open for Mion to see through, and when she got a good look at what was inside, she almost shrieked out.

_Satoko! _Mion hadn't wanted to believe it, but in her heart, she had known that Shion had captured her, too. That was who she was talking about before… the other person who she was going to torture and rip to pieces in the name of Satoshi. She was tied up with her arms and legs restrained to the point where Mion doubted that she could do more than struggle, and was positioned right next to a table that shined with the blades of multiple knives. Satoko was thrashing about, crying out words that Mion couldn't decipher. She was so horrified… and it broke Mion's heart.

"Calm down, sweet little Satoko," Shion said in a mocking tone, "it's not like your brother is here to save you or anything. No, he's not anymore, thanks to you. You know what you did, right?" she hissed out. "You made him run away. You made him leave. It's your fault. You clung to him and cried every day, relying on him despite the fact that you were so strong before, and it broke him. You were foolish and couldn't see that Satoshi-kun too was suffering!" she shouted, her voice booming out throughout the basement.

However, Satoko didn't appear to be listening. She was just squirming about as if enough squirming would break her free of her restraints. Mion couldn't see Shion's expression from the angle she was at, but she knew that Shion was probably burning with rage, for she reached out and slapped the girl right across the face hard enough so the sound echoed throughout the basement. Satoko, stunned, stopped struggling and looking at Shion with horrified eyes. "YOU HEARD ME, DIDN'T YOU?" screeched Shion. "IT'S YOUR FAULT HE'S GONE! YOU'RE SUCH A LITTLE, INCONSIDERATE BRAT! You didn't even think about your brother. You just clung to him and pulled him further down, making him suffer even more than he was before! And tonight, you're going to pay for that!" Shion reached for the table and snatched up a particularly sharp-looking knife that's blade seemed to glow in the light of the lamp hanging above them.

Satoko gasped at the sight of the blade, and she began to thrash about one again. "No, no! Mion-san, why are you doing this? It wasn't me, I didn't hurt Nii-Nii!" she cried out. "I didn't make him disappear! I'm sad too!" There were tears forming in her eyes that wasted no time as they began to stream down her face. MIon knew that the sight had to be just plain awful for a girl who had just gotten away from being abused, and for a girl who had just lost her brother and had no idea why. Now, she was being blamed for something she was even hurt about…

With the sight of the tears, something in Mion's head snapped. "No, Onee, don't do it!" screamed Mion, even though she knew doing so wouldn't change a thing. She didn't want Satoko to die here! Satoko, the sweet little girl who had just been healing from a horrible disaster… No…! No…! "Don't hurt her, it wasn't her fault!" she screamed. "Kill me, but just don't kill Satoko! It was my fault, kill me instead!" She was desperate for it to somehow work, but she knew it was futile. Satoko would die, and screaming out to take her place wouldn't do a thing. When she thought about it, she realized that she did truly want that. If it would mean saving Satoko, Mion would be happy to end her suffering… why hadn't she done so earlier? Why did she continue to live through this life, even when she was so horribly broken?

Shion whipped around. "Don't worry, I'll kill you too when I'm done with this brat here!" she laughed before moving right back towards Satoko. "Now, why don't we start, hm? Where should I start first…?" She put the knife underneath Satoko's chin. "Should I cut your neck, or perhaps I should start with the stomach? Hm… what a hard choice…"

A part of Mion's head was screaming for her to do something, to save Satoko, but she had to shut it up. What could she do? Nothing, that was the answer. She tried to shut up the voice within her, but it would not keep quiet. …Was the pain coming from her head, or was it from her heart?

"I think…" Shion's lips curved into a smile that Mion could just barely see. "I think I'll start cutting your stomach. It wouldn't be any fun to cut your neck and let you die quickly, would it? No, you wouldn't learn anything from a quick death… you have to _suffer_." The green-haired girl held the knife high into the air, and as Mion saw the light streak across the blade, the voice calling within her forced her to react. She slammed into the bars of the cell, almost screaming out as she felt the metal ramming into her ribs. What the hell was she doing? It wasn't going to do any good, so why was she even bothering? !

Shion snickered a bit at her sister's futile attempt to escape before bringing the knife down and slashing it across Satoko's stomach, earning a shriek from the blonde-haired girl. She laughed in amusement at how terrified it sounded, and moved to slash again, earning a shriek that was filled with endless amounts of pain and suffering.

"NO!" screamed Mion, though she didn't know why. Something inside her forced her against the bars of the cell again, and this time, she did scream out with the pain of smashing into it and ended up stumbling backwards. "S-Satoko!"

Shion laughed again at her sister's cries. "Give up, it's useless!" she shouted over her shoulder, turning and allowing her sister to get a look at her green eyes so full with sadism that Mion forgot that they even belonged to her sister. She turned back around again and allowed her blade to slash against Satoko again, this time digging deep into her soft, delicate skin. Blood splattered from the wound and stained her shirt, and Satoko again screamed with the pain of it. Tears were now pouring down at an insane rate, and Mion swore there was a puddle of them at the girl's feet. She thrashed more and more, but Mion could see that she was getting weaker, slowly losing herself…

Mion forced herself up and yelled out as she slammed into the bars again, only to be thrown back. She didn't give up, though, and began slamming into it again, over and over… Her body was beginning to ache. Why did she even bother?

"That's enough of that," Shion said, "let's have some more fun!" She held the knife high into the air and stabbed the girl through the shoulder. This time, when Satoko screamed, it was so full of pain that it skewered Mion right through the heart, and even though she was aching so much from throwing herself against the bars, Mion still continued. She thrust herself against it, ramming herself with all her strength, but the chance of it doing anything to help was already at zero.

Shion laughed. "Give it up, sister! You'll just make it easier for me to kill you, and we don't want that, now do we?" She removed the knife from the depth of the girl's shoulder and plunged it within the other, earning yet another shriek. Satoko tried struggling more and more, but the thrashes were now becoming slower and slower, and weaker and weaker… The puddle of tears beneath her became tainted with her blood, and the tears dripping from her face mixed with the blood that streamed down from her stomach and shoulders. Shion was standing right in the mixture, but it seemed like she couldn't care less. She was enjoying herself far too much to care. With another slash, she tore right through the girl's stomach yet again, releasing streams of blood. Shion began laughing hysterically, though the last word that could describe her laughter was humorous.

Mion screamed out as she rammed herself into the cage yet again, but this time, when she fell, she was aching so much that her body refused to allow herself to stand up. She struggled on the floor desperately, wanting to throw herself against the cell again even though she knew that it was no better than flailing on the floor. Her heart screamed out to her, begging her to stand up and do something, but her body refused, and now, so did her mind. She just closed her eyes and accepted it. There was no longer anything she could do…

If that was so, then why was she crying? Salty tears were beginning to fall to the ground, and Mion couldn't stop them. She knew that there was nothing that could be done, and she had already accepted that Satoko was going to do, so why then? Why did she have to cry over something she knew was inevitable?

Shion positioned the knife and slashed Satoko across the chest. Satoko screeched out again, though she was no longer struggling.

"P-Please, Mion-san. I-It wasn't… I-I didn't… It wasn't my f-fau—" Satoko started, but she couldn't finish, for Shion ran the knife across her throat, and that was it. She screamed out and choked on her own blood as it began streaming out of her neck and down onto her body. Now, she was bleeding too much to last longer, and her heaving chest was slowly growing weaker, and weaker… The powerful cries she was letting out before began to cease, and with a few more chokes and coughes of blood, Satoko stopped breathing all together.

Shion hit her body. Satoko didn't budge. Shion giggled a bit, and that giggle soon turned into pure, uncontrollable laugher filled with pure delight. "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I KILLED HER, SATOSHI-KUN! I KILLED THE ONE WHO MADE YOU SUFFER! PRAISE ME! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Mion struggled on the ground, still crying. No, Satoko… not Satoko… She wanted to scream out and cry even more, but why was she even crying in the first place? She knew she was going to die, so why did it matter? Mion buried her head into the hard ground, trying to tell herself not to cry, and that the fate was unavoidable anyways, so there was no point in crying…

Shion calmed down. She hoisted Satoko's body out of the restraints and dragged her through the basement, to the well. There was a deep pit that was said was used for throwing old bodies down, and Mion knew that was exactly where Satoko was going to lay. She left like throwing her guts up as she looked at the trail of thick blood left behind by Satoko's body, but she managed to contain it as she buried her head back into the cold stone.

She heard a hollow thud from the distance and knew that was the sound of Satoko's lifeless body hitting the ground. She told herself not to cry anymore, and that this was to be expected, that there was no reason to cry. Yet, as she thought more about Satoko's traps and her taunting laughter that everyone loved and could only belong to her, she realized how much she had just lost. Satoko was an irreplaceable member of the club. There had been no turning back to the good days before with Satoshi's disappearance, but this marked a step further into the abyss. Without Satoko, the club would never be the same.

Shion walked away, humming that same, dreadful tune as she entered the room. She cleaned up traces of the blood on the restraining board and then moved to clean some of the ground. Halfway through, though, she looked at the mess and sighed to herself. "So tedious. I don't want to do this right now," she said with a yawn. "Might as well get the fun stuff over with now before I have to bore myself…"

Mion froze. She meant her murder, didn't she? So that meant her time to live was almost over… She felt her heart race in her chest, now telling her that she had to break free somehow, that she had to live even though it was impossible. Why did she want to live, anyways? There was no point anymore…

Shion snatched up another knife from the table, placing down the already used and stained one. She observed it in the light, making sure that the blade was sharp and that it shined properly. Mion cringed when she saw it, for it looked even sharper than the last one, and she knew that it would be painful. At least, she thought, her suffering would end…

Shion approached her in the cage and twirled the key ring about in her hand. She smirked as she looked down at her sister, so helplessly locked in the cell. "You're pathetic. Crying over a brat like her and slamming yourself into the cell like that. Did you really think that it would break down?" she said tauntingly.

Mion shook her head. "N-No, of course not…"

"Then why the hell were you ramming against the cell wall like that?" asked Shion as she fiddled with the knife in her hand in a way that drew Mion's eyes to it. Her green gaze rested onto the sharp blade that would surely rip her to shreds… ugh… she felt sick. She didn't respond to Shion's question, having no idea how to answer it. She herself didn't even know…

Shion sighed when she didn't get an answer. "It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'm getting impatient here… Satoshi-kun's waiting to be avenged and I'm taking too long." She held the keys up and stuck one in the lock, twisting it and unlocking the door. Before Mion could even move an inch, though, she entered and locked the door behind her, preventing any method of escape. She smirked as she held the knife with the sharp tip pointing at Mion, walking towards her.

"Let's play a little game, shall we?" Shion said as she placed the knife dangerously close to Mion's neck. "You tell me what you did wrong, and I'll make your death quicker for each thing you get right. If you get something wrong, though, or just don't know, then I'll cut you deeply and slowly," she purred.

Mion stiffened and nodded frantically.

"All right, let's start this game." Shion hovered the knife above Mion's body, drifting it down towards her stomach. "Tell me everything you did wrong. Every single last thing."

Mion gulped. "W-Well, Satoshi was in love with me instead of you because I was helping him out with Satoko… I mean, at least… I think… that's why." She wasn't really sure why Satoshi picked her over Shion, but it was the one reason she could think of. Satoshi was very grateful for her help in changing Satoko into a different person and he expressed it to her many, many times. "I think… I think you were upset about that."

Shion narrowed her eyes at her, looking at her sister right in the eyes. "Go on."

"And I… I wasn't there for him," she choked out, "I didn't comfort him at all when he was hurt, and all I did was turn him down when he asked me out. It hurt him, and I didn't try to make him feel better…" Realizing all this and wondering whether or not it was really true made Mion hurt on the inside. Was it really her fault? Perhaps it was her fault that she didn't do anything to comfort Satoshi, and maybe if she had, all this could have been reversed. She tried to shake this out of her mind, but as she confessed this to Shion in order to earn her quick death, she wondered more and more about it. It was true… wasn't it? "It's my fault. I should have been there for him, and then he wouldn't have run away…"

Shion grinned maliciously. "Good, it seems that you know your faults." Shion hovered the knife above Mion's heart. "For that, you'll get a quick death. Not rewarding, but at least you know what you did wrong, unlike that Satoko brat," she sneered, spitting with disgust at the mention of the little girl's name. "Don't struggle much, okay? You'll just make it more painful," she purred.

Mion gulped and nodded. Now, there was nothing to do but sit here as Shion let it all end. This was for the best, wasn't it? She didn't want to stay here any longer. Ending her suffering would be incredible. In fact, she was now just wishing that she had really died when she had fallen off that cliff, and that Rion had never brought her here. That would have saved her so much suffering, and death was more relaxing than a crazy world like the one she was in…

Shion postioned the knife and grinned madly as she looked at her sister's face. Even though she longed for death, Mion was still scared of it. What would happen when Shion threw the knife down? Would it hurt? Would she get dizzy and fade away? Or maybe, would she get sent to an even more corrupt world than this one? That was the last thing Mion wanted. Her eyes widened as she thought of countless worlds she could end up in. Ones where Shion killed more than just her and Satoko, ones where Keiichi murdered her, ones where everyone was murdering everyone…

Shion held the knife high above Mion's chest, and with a quick motion, she brought it down towards her heart. As Mion saw the knife move, her mind instantly jumped to the idea of a worse world, and with that, her body reacted. She tumbled out of the way of the knife and into a wall as the knife instead jammed down into the stone floor, surprising a confused Shion.

"What the hell? !" shrieked Shion. "I was being nice, sister. I was giving you a quick death. But if you want to play it the hard way…" She held the knife up, growling and sneering. "I'll do it the hard way."

Shion yelled out as she ran towards Mion with the knife, and when she saw it coming, she jumped right out of the way at the very last second and allowed the knife to get caught in the wall. Mion stood behind Shion as she watched her dislodge the knife from the wall, wondering what she should do. Her eyes glanced towards the locked door, and she knew that ramming herself into the wall and running out wouldn't do her any good. There was no point in trying, and she would lose time and possibly injure herself, allowing Shion to kill her.

Shion finally pulled the knife out, grumbling in annoyance as she stared at her sister with pure rage in her eyes. "Do you not understand what you've done, sister?" she snorted. "I thought we made it nice and clear wh you had to go. Because of Satoshi-kun, and because you weren't there for him. Because it's _your_ fault that he suffered, because it's _you _who didn't comfort him when he needed it most, because it's _you _who forced him to sit there in suffering." With each reason Shion gave, Mion felt a knife ram into her heart and the idea slowly grow more and more probable in her brain. No… it wasn't her fault… it couldn't be…

But if she had done something and healed him, then maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have ever ran away… That's right… Shion was right, wasn't she? Mion gulped as she felt a huge lump of lead settle down in the back of her throat. No… she didn't want to believe it. No, no, no!

"What was I supposed to do? !" Mion shouted out, trying to defend herself and convince herself that it wasn't her fault. "Accept him as my boyfriend? You know why I couldn't do that! You would be upset, Shion! You love him!"

Shion growled. "You didn't have to be so harsh with him," she hissed out, "and you could have comforted him afterwards. Redirected him towards me, maybe."

"I tried!" shrieked Mion in desperation to convince herself, even though she knew actually convincing her twin was impossible. "I tried so hard, Onee, but he wouldn't! He wouldn't love you, he wanted me! And you know that I didn'tw ant to hurt you, sister, and besides, I have _Kei-chan."_

Shion snorted. "Kei-chan? Ha!" she laughed. In that moment, Mion saw pure madness in her sister's eyes, spiraling about and making those once loving eyes seem so distant and threatening. The madness she saw, however, was madness without reason. It was not madness that stemmed from Satoshi, it was simply the desire to harm, something that Mion thought Shion would never do. "As if you have him!"

Mion shot her sister a confused look. "What do you mean? Kei-chan's my boyfriend—"

"—Not really, though. Have you been seeing him recently?" Shion asked in a mocking sort of tone as she plastered a smirk across her face. "He's been chatting with that Rena girl, not you."

Mion instantly picked up on what Shion was trying to imply. "Onee, you know Kei-chan's not one to do that!"

Shion huffed. "As if Kei-chan's not like that. Listen to me, Shion. He doesn't love you. That bastard is cheating on you with that sly bitch, Rena. Have you seen the way that they look at each other?" she asked, staring right into her sister's eyes. "They talk a lot, and they always smile at each other. In fact, sometimes, Kei-chan will spend more time talking to her. Don't tell me you haven't noticed that she's been the one he's been teaching math to instead of you."

Mion gulped. It was true, Keiichi and Rena did talk a lot, but that wasn't anything. "Onee, they're just friends!"

"STOP DENYING IT!" Shion cut in with a screech that echoed throughout the torture chamber, causing Mion to shut up and freeze instantly. She repositioned the knife, pointing the tip at Mion. "That Kei-chan never loved you. He loves Rena now. That little bitch grabbed him and stole him away from you… heh… yeah, they're together now. I see them all the time, don't you know? You see them all the time, too. Talking, helping each other, smiling at each other… and don't tell me you don't smile at Kei-chan the same way they smile at each other."

Mion froze as she pictured these images in her head. Yes, it was true. Rena and Keiichi were spending so much time with each other, and they did study together, and their smiles at each other often caused alarm to run in Mion and for her to interject, but why? She paused and wondered that for a moment. There would be moments when she felt the need to remind Rena that Keiichi was her boyfriend or switch the topic, and that was always when they looked at each other and smiled, or were having a conversation that Mion felt was getting too close… She had been doing it all this time, hadn't she? And that was what made her so uneasy around Rena.

"N-No… it's not true…" Mion said, her voice shaky, though now she couldn't deny it. Shion's words seemed too real…

"GIVE IT UP!" shouted Shion. "It's real, you idiot! Just give it up! Keiichi loves Rena, not you! You're just a waste of time! He gave up on you the moment that their eyes met! …Hell, I guess it doesn't matter, you'll be dead in ten seconds!" Shion pointed the knife at Mion, giving her only enough time to process Shion's words before running towards her sister with it, aiming for her heart. Mion, now shaken, could barely do anything, and could barely think. No, no, no… all this… it couldn't be true… she couldn't be the reason why Satoshi left, she couldn't be the reason for the downfall of this world, and it couldn't be that Keiichi didn't care for her anymore. What was that time when he held her when she was feeling stressed, then? That was after Rena came. Was it all a lie?

With those thoughts in mind, Mion swiftly ran out of the way of the blade, and Shion noticed it before she could drive her knife in and quickly switched directions. Without thinking much more, Mion dodged the knife again and allowed Shion to ram it into the stone by accident. She tugged at it to get it loose from the stone, but before she could, Mion punched her sister in the face, throwing her off guard. Shion hissed at her sister and rammed into her side, trying to get her away as she removed the knife from the wall. Mion grabbed onto her sister and began trying to pull her away from the knife, reaching for her wrists to grab. Shion struggled in the grip and kept trying to push her away so that she could get the knife free, but Mion refused to give in. With a quick shove to the side and a punch to the stomach, Mion pushed Shion out of the way and onto the ground. She stomped on her sister's stomach and pinned her down as she reached for the knife and dislodged it from the wall. As Shion quickly began to try to move, Mion jumped backwards with the knife in hand.

Shion stood there, complete and utter rage burning within the depth of her green eyes. She spat at Mion as she stood there, her whole appearance completely disheveled. Her chest heaved up and down and she looked right into her sisters eyes with her enraged green ones, the insanity gleaming from within.

"Why you…!" Shion shouted. "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!"

She ran towards her sister with a burst of speed with her hands held out towards her neck, ready to strangle her sister and break her neck. Mion tried to move, but before she knew it, Shion's hands were locked around her neck tightly, squeezing and squeezing. Mion gasped as she struggled for air and to get. Her elbow went to her sister's stomach and rammed into it over and over again, causing Shion to yell out. Without thinking, she kicked her sister in the stomach and forced her to stumble backwards, her hands releasing from her sister's neck. Mion gasped as she took deep breaths, relived that she could taste the air again.

"You…" Shion hissed, "you killed Satoshi-kun… you forced him to run away… you won't get away… I'll murder you if it's the last thing I do! Then I'll kill your little pretend boyfriend and his real girlfriend… haha… that will be fun, too. They didn't help him, either, you know… hahaha…"

With that thought sparking again in Mion's mind, something inside her clicked. She screamed out, yelling to herself about how it wasn't her fault, about how it couldn't be true. Nothing was her fault, she didn't cause this downfall, no! She couldn't believe it! And Rena was not Keiichi's girlfriend, she was! She howled and she ran towards her sister, and with a single swift movement that she barely even thought about, she plunged the blade of the knife into her stomach.

Shion shrieked out as the blade sunk inside of her, and Mion held it still. She stared into her sister's eyes, at the pain within them, at the shock within them, and when she knew her soul was on the edge of fleeing, she removed the knife and allowed her sister to fall to the ground with a hollow thud.

She breathed heavily as she looked down at her twin writhing on the ground, her eyes wide with shock as she coughed. "You…" choked Shion, looking right into her sister's eyes, "I… I _hate you. _I hope you die. I never loved you, sister."

"I never loved you, either!" Mion screamed, the words floating to her mouth without a single thought. "I hate you!"

Shion grinned her cruel, twisted grin. "I'm glad the feeling is mutual, then," she coughed. "Go burn in hell."

With a final cough, Shion's life faded away. Mion looked down at her sister for a few moments, breathing heavily and watching her for any sign of a single movement, even a twitch. However, her twin just lay there lifelessly with no sign of movement. It was clear in a few seconds that she was dead, and that she would never stand up again.

The reality of what had just happened hit her fully. She had just killed her own twin sister, and had left her with the message that she had never loved her. Tears filled her eyes as she looked down at the lifeless body, suddenly wishing that her twin would wake up again, even if she had been trying to kill her before. "O-Onee. Come on, wake up… Haha, I know you're not really dead… I know I didn't just kill you," she choked out as she looked down at the motionless body. "Come on, this isn't a funny game…"

Whatever words she said were now just excuses. "Come on, Onee…" she urged as she tried to deny the situation. "You know I hate it when you play games like this. It scares me…" She crouched down on the ground and hovered over her sister's dead body, allowing her tears to drip down onto her face. "No… no… no… I didn't want to… I didn't mean to… I didn't…" She felt more tears form in her eyes, which had now began to streak down her face like a rapid waterfall. "Onee!" she wailed, "come back!"

She bawled out as she buried her head into her sister's body, hugging her tightly. "I don't hate you, I didn't mean it! I always loved you, Onee! You've always meant more to me than anyone else in the whole world, and I've known you for my whole life! We… we've known each other since before we were born. We were together even then… No… you can't leave me now… no… I don't… I don't... I don't want it to end like this!"

She clutched her sister's body tightly, remembering every single memory they shared together. She remembered when they played outside when they were still small, the many jokes they shared together, the times where they went out exploring and got in trouble like the mischievous duo they were. She remembered the sweeter times, like when she comforted her sister over losing Satoshi in the old world, and how they would always hold each other and talk about their problems. They would share everything. She even remembered darker memories, like the twin swap in the other world and how Shion had been taken from her.

She didn't want this.

_Shion was right,_ Mion realized, _I'm the reason why Satoshi left. It's because I'm a monster, like the one that I saw in Satoshi's eyes on that day… _

It was no wonder why Keiichi loved Rena more than her.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**(Spoilers below, don't skip down and read this or anything until you've read the chapter. Do people do that?)**

**It kills me whenever one twin kills the other, be it in fanfiction or in the actual series (one of the reasons why Meakashi-hen breaks my heart). This is so hard for me to write. I love them both so much, and they love each other so much, so forcing them to turn on each other like that is hard. Not only that, but writing about Satoko's death is also hard. The poor, poor girl has just been through so much… she doesn't deserve it. No one in Higurashi deserves what they go through.**

**R.I.P Shion and Satoko.**

**Now that school is over, I can update more often. Don't expect daily updates or anything… just expect them more often. My family is going through a crazy time right now, but it's all mostly okay. Camp is coming up soon, and I'm excited. It was kind of sad leaving school, I was kind of tearing up when I was saying goodbye to some people, which is embarrassing, because I actually am extremely happy to leave for the summer. Try talking to your English teacher while trying not to embarrass yourself by crying. I think he realized, I mean, I could tell he did…**

**Enough with the depressing stuff! My gosh, I got a new laptop! It's a Macbook Pro, and it's STUNNING! I love it so much! They put my old hard drive in it, and it works just fine! It's so pretty! I love it so much! I just said that two sentences ago! I hate it when there are too many exclamation points! Yeah, love this computer. Let's hope it doesn't break! And what's with this image uploader business? I don't have a good image for my stories D:. **

**~Crimso**

**P.S: What the, half of my documents were deleted because of age. That just goes to show how much I neglected this. I'M SORRY GUYS! Finals are evil.**


	36. Chapter 35: The Point of Insanity

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I wasn't going to write tonight, but here I am. I've been busy with preparing for camp recently, so I hope not to be too slow with updates. I only have a few days left, and it scares me to death.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Five: The Point of Insanity_

Mion found herself huddled underneath her futon sheets, burying herself in the warmth. It was night a day after she had witnessed Satoko's murder and had killed her own sister, and the shock of it had never left her. She hadn't gone to school that day and had locked herself inside her room all day, refusing to answer to anyone. The whole village was probably searching for Shion and Satoko right now, but she didn't care. Nothing seemed to matter to her anymore.

Her mind was completely shattered. She could barely form complete thoughts, and nothing seemed to cheer her up. The only thing that she could think about was how she had murdered her own sister, and how she was probably the cause of all of this despair. Why did Satoshi disappear again? It was because of her. Because she didn't reach out to him when he needed it the most, because she didn't comfort him, because she ignored him. It was all her fault. There was truly no one else to blame. Why had she been searching for the reason for so long again? Shion had exposed her to the obvious truth last night, and she realized she should have noticed the reason ages ago.

There was no point in throwing the blame on someone else, because it truly was her fault. There was no one else to point fingers at. The only person she had to blame for this mess was herself. It made her feel bad for yelling at Rion before, because the goddess had nothing to do with the incidents that were happening around her, but she did wish that there were something that the weak god could do to save her. But now, with Shion and Satoko dead, it was already too late to turn back. There was now officially nothing she could do to save this world. Satoko and Shion were irreplaceable members of the club and great friends to her, and now that there was no way to bring them back, there was no more chance of having this world turn brighter. Sure, it had already been like that with Satoshi's disappearance, but this made Mion feel even worse about her situation.

The… "incident" with Shion last night had opened Mion's eyes up to a reality that she had never wanted to see. She was the reason behind this despair and there was no one else she could possibly blame for it. Not only that, but Shion's words about her relationship with Keiichi still burned strongly in her mind. The boy who she thought was her loving boyfriend might be interested in another girl instead of her, and Mion realized last night that it was completely likely that he was.

Rena. She had stolen Keiichi away from her with her cute smile. If only she hadn't come here…why did she have to come here? She was probably having a happier life back with her family at home, so why the hell did she have to move to Hinamizawa? Mion gritted her teeth together and slammed her fist down into the fabric of her futon in a fit of rage. If only she hadn't come here… then that could at least be hers… at least she would have something to hold onto, something to comfort her. But now, there was no one. She had lost Shion, and now, she had lost Keiichi to a friend that should have never come in the first place.

She bit her lip. No, she told herself, she had to stop thinking this way. She had no one to blame but herself. Besides, why would Keiichi want someone like her? She was a monster, after all. She had killed her own sister and yelled that she had hated her, despite the fact that it wasn't true. She had hurt her before her death, and she had—

"Don't think like that," Rion squeaked out softly, clearly hesitant to speak to the enraged girl before her. "You shouldn't—"

"—Why the hell does it matter, Rion?" Mion spat. "Just go away, I don't need to hear from a weak god like you. There is no need for you to force these positive thoughts on me, I've given up on that kind of crap. You know that too. That's why you shut up before."

Rion didn't even look surprised by the girl's words and simply looked at her feet with a solemn expression on her face before she faded away into nothing at all.

Mion sighed as she thought to herself. The only words that would come to her head were the words of her sister before she died, and how Keiichi could have never loved her. Why didn't she see it before? They were always smiling at each other, chatting with each other, and Mion had always had a bad feeling about Rena for some reason, but it wasn't until now that she was able to identify the fact that it was because she was stealing Keiichi away from her. She was so foolish, so stupid. She should have realized it before, and maybe, just maybe, she would have been able to stop it.

She breathed heavily as she thought about Keiichi and Rena smiling at each other, and she starting frantically shaking her head as she tried to get the image out. No, she couldn't think about something like that… the image was stabbing at her sanity, creating a small hole that was fighting to close itself up. As she pictured the two of them chatting happily by themselves, ignoring her, the knife eating at her sanity began to push further and further, but it wasn't enough. Mion was desperately trying to shake the image out at this point, trying to cast if off… but what could she do? She was truly powerless now.

_Yeah, and you caused it. You caused all this. You are the reason behind this mess. You could have stopped it all, you know. You could have saved Satoshi, you know. You probably could have saved Satoko, you know. You could have taken Keiichi from Rena before he fell in love with her, you know. But what did you do? You did nothing. And now, it's too late. _This voice was echoing repeatedly in her head, and Mion tried her hardest to shake it away with other thoughts. Did she have to blame herself? Maybe Shion was wrong, maybe she wasn't the reason behind it. Yeah… who the hell could have saved crazy Satoshi anyways? He was mad and he was going to kill his aunt no matter what. Besides, what could she have done to heal him as his sister got worse and worse everyday? There was no way in hell to chase out his aunt and uncle and stop the abuse, and the only way was to kill them. That was what Satoshi did. But… that led to his insanity.

Yeah, it wasn't her fault, she told herself, she just had to calm down.

. "You're a fool," a strangely familiar voice hissed at her from behind. "You caused it. You know it."  
>Mion threw the covers off of her and whipped around, fear shaking her very core like never before as she stared at the figure below her. Her heart seemed to be racing a marathon as it pumped faster and faster when she identified the figure behind her in less than three seconds. With each beat of her heart, fear pumped into her veins, quickly spreading through every single cell in her body, and every fiber of her being.<p>

Shion grinned her taunting grin as she looked down at her horrified sister, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "You fool. You're telling yourself lies. Don't you hate lies, my dear sister?"

Mion's hands shook with the intensity of an earthquake. "No… you're dead… you can't be here…"  
>Shion just laughed in a way that Mion felt was supposed to mock her, and did it ever work. Her laugh tore at her sanity, ripping it with demonic claws and shredding it to pieces. "My dear sister, we're twins. Have you forgotten that? We were born together, and even in death, we're still twins. I'm always with you, sister… and it hurts down here… you hurt me, you really did. I thought that you had noticed your sins…"<p>

Mion's eyes widened to the size of plates. "No… it wasn't my fault…"

"HA!" Shion laughed. "Wasn't your fault? You could have done so many things, my dear sister, so don't try to deny it. If you had told Satoshi some words to pick him up, he may have had the strength to fight his uncle and aunt back without killing him. If you had had the will to run up to the child services and force them to take care of Satoko, then the whole thing could have been avoided. And had you not been so blind and _stupid_ as to notice that Rena was pulling Keiichi from you, you could have walked up to him and stopped it all form happening. And just where would you be if you had done all that?"

Shion grinned as she took a step forward, then beginning to pace around in circles around Mion, shooting her a look with her taunting, cruel green eyes filled with madness and pure enjoyment from seeing her sister so horrified. "Satoshi would be here. Satoko would be healed up and she wouldn't be with her aunt and uncle, and surely she would be laughing and happy. Had you been kind to Satoshi, he would have moved on from you and perhaps gone to me, where he would have been nice and happy for the rest of his life. And dear sister, don't you forget that _I_ would have been happy, and that the pieces of _my _heart wouldn't have been stepped on and spat on. Not only by Satoshi, but by _YOU,_" she hissed out, spitting the last word out as if on top of Mion.

"Heck, you would have Keiichi to hold onto, and then you wouldn't be so pathetic and weak, now would you? And if this all hadn't happened, then Rika wouldn't be upset and depressed either! You caused it, sister. You made a poor, young little girl who shouldn't have to suffer depressed. You ruined her life." She then forced another grinned with taunting malice rushing through it on her face. "Oh, not to mention that I wouldn't have had to kill Satoko. So, technically speaking, it was YOU who murdered her. You, Sonozaki Shion, are a murderer! Not just for murdering me, but for Satoko, too, and for ruining the life of a happy little girl!"  
>Each word stabbed at Mion, and she tried to deny them, but her force was no longer strong enough. The force field her sanity had put up was completely obliterated by Shion's stabbing, tearing words that seemed to rip her to shreds. She breathed heavily as she listened to them, shaking her head as she scooted backwards on the floor, but she could no longer find strength to deny them.<p>

"No…" she breathed.

"DON'T YOU SAY THAT!" screamed Shion. "YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!" At that moment, her eyes seemed to light up in a sickening, green glow that was glossed over by pure rage like Mion had never seen before. She gasped and stumbled backwards, crying out with pain. "Dear sister, you know this already. It's all your fault. All of it. You forced me to murder, you forced Satoshi to murder, you forced Rika's life to ruin, you forced Keiichi to move to Rena, and you forced your own life to it's end! Why don't you just jump off a cliff again, and maybe this time you'll actually DIE!"

Mion gasped out in shock, but all she could find the strength to do was shake her head. Her denial was no longer working, and that was all she could do to block the words out, to prevent herself from fully accepting them. If she stopped, it felt like all the words would soon be completely accepted by her mind…

"But you know, sister, there is one thing that you can do. I know you've fallen too far to save yourself from ruin, to save me from death, to save Satoko from death, and Satoshi as well, but there is one thing that you could do…"  
>Shion crouched down by Mion's side and placed her hands on Mion's shoulder, digging her fingernails in them. They seemed to have twisted into horrible, deformed animal claws that were now tearing at her and causing burning pain. Shion chuckled just a bit, but said nothing more than one word. "<em>Rena<em>."

That was all that she needed to say. As if her state of mind wasn't already broken enough, Mion completely snapped. Her eyes widened and her mind seemed to enter a state where she couldn't think, where Shion's words just repeated over and over again…

"Oh, and by the way…" Shion started. She grinned tauntingly. "I'm going to get you, sister. _I'm still here for you. I'm waiting… it hurts…waiting hurts… but I'm going to kill you. You're next… Ahaha… come for me… Ahaha… Ahaha..._"

At that moment, the Shion before her twisted into a demonic version of herself, the same one that Mion had seen in Satoshi's eyes. The demon roared at her and leapt with a powerful pounce, and the next thing Mion could feel was the fangs ripping at her with points as sharp as knives. The demon's claws tore at her like she was some kind of scratching post, and they ripped at her mind, at her body. The demon whispered into her ears, reminding her about how it was her fault, how she had no one else to blame but herself…

…And she no longer had the strength to deny it.

Mion screamed out with the pain of the demon. She wanted to call for help, for someone to save her, but she couldn't. Another part of her yelled at her to deny the words, but she had already long ago accepted them. She had before, hadn't she? She had just been trying to deny it with the last of her strength… but that was already gone…

And when she couldn't take it anymore, she found herself on her legs, walking. Her mind was in a state of complete and utter distress, echoing out nothing but Shion's words from before. "It's your fault…" they told her, "you are to blame for everything. You killed a girl. You ruined her life. You forced your friends to murder… _it's your fault… no one but your fault…"_

She found herself stumbling towards the kitchen, and her body seemed to move on its own. She snatched up a knife and held it by her side. The next thing that she knew, she was out the door, walking down the paths of Hinamizawa. Her mind would not let her question why she was holding a knife and walking down the paths at night where someone could clearly see her with the night. Her mind was full of Shion's words, and it had no room to work out simple problems like that.

_ "Do you not understand what you've done, sister?" she snorted. "I thought we made it nice and clear why you had to go. Because of Satoshi-kun, and because you weren't there for him. Because it's your fault that he suffered, because it's you who didn't comfort him when he needed it most, because it's you who forced him to sit there in suffering."_

She panted as she took steps forward. Yeah, because of her… because of her everyone was suffering… because she hadn't done anything… when she could have… yeah… that was the reason why…

She walked along. Nothing could seem to stop her from moving forward, and she was lucky that no one happened to be on the same path as her. Mion was doing nothing but holding the knife, walking, and thinking, but for some reason, she could not drop the knife. It was as if it had become a part of her soul, protecting her from the danger... What danger, exactly, was it protecting her from? She didn't know, but she didn't even question it in the first place. Had she any room to think about that sort of thing?

_You caused it. You caused all this. You are the reason behind this mess. You could have stopped it all, you know. You could have saved Satoshi, you know. You probably could have saved Satoko, you know. You could have taken Keiichi from Rena before he fell in love with her, you know. But what did you do? You did nothing. And now, it's too late. … You caused it. You caused all this. You are the reason behind this mess. You could have stopped it all, you know. You could have saved Satoshi, you know. You probably could have saved Satoko, you know. You could have taken Keiichi from Rena before he fell in love with her, you know. But what did you do? You did nothing. And now, it's too late. You caused it. You caused all this. You are the reason behind this mess. You could have stopped it—_

Mion halted when her eyes rested upon two figures in the dark. She recognized them almost immediately.

Keiichi and Rena.

She saw the smile on her face. The cute, sweet smile that she knew could never be hers. Then, she saw the smile on Keiichi's, which she knew came from the happiness of seeing someone like Rena's beautiful smile. Yeah, and he used to smile at her that way, but now… but now…

_ "That Kei-chan never loved you. He loves Rena now. That little bitch grabbed him and stole him away from you… heh… yeah, they're together now. I see them all the time, don't you know? You see them all the time, too. Talking, helping each other, smiling at each other… and don't tell me you don't smile at Kei-chan the same way they smile at each other," Shion said, grinning. _

Something in her mind snapped. She didn't know what it was, but she didn't try to stop what her body did next. Without a single second thought, she found herself running towards the two of them, clutching her knife tightly. A part of her mind that was still sane screamed at her to stop, but there was no room for her to even listen to that voice anymore. Her mind had been taken over.

She dashed between the two of them, earning shocked gasps from them. "Shi-chan, what are you doing here?" Rena asked. "And what were you doing today? Why weren't you at school, I wonder, I wonder…"

Mion gritted her teeth. She thought she was so cute for repeating the end of her sentence, huh? She whirled around and pointed the knife straight at he, and with a roar, she ran to stab.

Rena gasped and moved out of the way, and she heard a surprised Keiichi yell out some words in shock, but she was unable to process what they were. The only thing that she could think of were Shion's words… and how right she was. She fought without even thinking. The hand with her knife in it seemed to jab at Rena without second thoughts, and when the girl began to run away, her feet seemed to move without her telling them to.

_She stole him from you. She ruined your life. Yeah, she's a part of it… too! She's a part of the reason why this world messed up…! It's not just you… ahahaha… it's not just you! She needs to be punished! ! !_

Rena was yelling for help, but Mion didn't take it in. She grinned with a smile that mirrored that of her sister's yesterday, and she giggled a bit at how desperate she sounded. In a moment, she would be able to take revenge for what had happened, for breaking this world apart…

She chased Rena down, and whenever she got the chance, she would swipe at her with the knife, but Rena was fast. Her frustration and desire grew with every single swipe, and so did her speed, but it seemed that no matter how much she ran, Rena was always one step ahead. She gritted her teeth in annoyance as she chased after the screaming girl, the want to kill burning within her. They were now in the forest part of the village, and Mion and Rena showed no signs of slowing down.

That's when Rena tripped over a root, and it was all over. Mion pounced on her prey like a hungry lioness and pinned her down underneath her. She laughed madly as she stabbed the knife down on the girl's back once, but even when she heard the girl scream with such pain in it that it made her smile, it wasn't enough. She wanted to hear more of it… no… she needed to hear more of it! Her cries were so satisfying! Mion grinned madly as she stabbed down again, earning another shriek from her victim, but she didn't stop then. She stabbed again, and again, and again, and soon, her giggles turned into maddened laughter. Oh, how she loved to hear Rena scream! She deserved it! She deserved every last bit of pain for taking away her Keiichi!

When the screams faded away, Mion got off of Rena and looked down at her. She kicked her once with her shoe, and when she didn't budge, Mion grinned so wildly and madly that Shion would turn green with envy. "Ahaha…. Ahahaha… Ahahahahahaha… Ahahahahahaha… AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SERVES YOU RIGHT! GO BURN IN HELL FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME AND THIS WORLD, RYUUGUU RENA!" she laughed out, throwing her hands up in the air as she continued to cackle madly.

She slumped over, grinning. Yes, she had taken care of the problem. Now…. Now…

She began to turn away and walk back, but a figure dashed right by her, causing her to turn around. Keiichi knelt by Rena's side, yelling. "Oh god, Rena! No, you can't be dead! Rena! Speak to me!" His hands went to her body as he began to shake her back and forth, desperately trying to wake her from a slumber that was already impossible for her to wake from.

Keiichi looked up at Mion, surprise in his eyes. "No… Shion, you couldn't have…" His eyes trailed to the bloody knife in her hand, and his eyes widened with complete and utter horror. "…You… did… no… no… no… Shion… I… I… Not you, my Shion…"  
><em>My Shion. <em>Those words lit a flame of fury in Mion's soul that was greater than any flame that came before it, and greater than she had ever seen. How dare he call her his Shion, even after he cheated on her with that Rena bitch! "YOU LIED TO ME, KEI-CHAN!" she screamed out.

"W-What? I lied about what? Shion, why did you kill—"

"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" she screamed out. "I thought you cared for me, I thought you loved me. But no… no… you went and took her, you went and cheated on me… when I loved you so much!"

Keiichi looked stunned. "No… no… you have it wrong, Shion! You're the only one for me, I could never—"

"YOU'RE LYING!" screamed Mion. Without a single thought, Mion ran over to Keiichi with the knife and tackled him to the ground. The boy struggled beneath her, but in her rage, he was no match. She plunged the knife into his heart, and he gasped out.

"No… Shi-… I love yo…"

She didn't even stop then. She continually stabbed the knife again and again in his heart, listening to his twisted screams full of pain, and probably now full of regret from having cheated on her. Yeah, that was right… he was regretting it now. He should have never cheated on her!

She ripped deep into his heart, even after she knew he was dead. He deserved to have his heart destroyed for ripping hers out and playing with it! It served him right… it served him right! Fury blinded her vision and seemed to blur her world as she plunged the knife deeper into his wound, twisting it so that all the blood in his body poured out like a waterfall.

When she felt the rage cease, she got up from him, looking down at her two kills and smiling to herself. Yeah, it was done now… she had killed them… She grinned to herself. She no longer felt bad about killing Shion, and to her surprise, she didn't feel bad about murdering Rena or Keiichi. It felt _good_. She looked down at her stained hands and chuckled. Yeah, this world was already messed up, so what did it matter if she lost two more people? It no longer made a difference…

Right as she was about to turn around and leave, however, her eyes met with someone else's.

It was Rika, staring at her with determination in her eyes like never before, and a seriousness that she would never expect from a girl her age.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Mion's lost it officially. Wow, she does that a lot in my fanfiction, doesn't she? Wait until you read EOG. That reminds me, I think I'm going to write TB first and if I feel like it, write some EOG along the way. We'll see, though. (By the way, Shion in the beginning was a hallucination, but I think you figured that out.)**

**I told you everything yesterday, so I'll just add here that for summer, things have been busy. I've been packing for camp and getting ready for it, and that includes going to a lot of stores and buying things I need. I'm being dragged everywhere by my mother, and tomorrow, I have to get a ton of new clothing and spend just about all day doing so.**

**Sigh. Oh well. I'm exciting for camp… I mean, really excited. It's a nice change from GED, when I was dreading it, right? I can't wait!**

**~Crimso**


	37. Chapter 36: All the Evil

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**My Internet is broken. It's one AM and I don't really want to write right now, but what else do I have to do? Sleep? Yeah, I just drank caffeine because I thought I would be staying up all night on the internet, but… sigh. Never a good idea, Crimso, never a good idea…**

**Notes: Okay, so the end of this chapter has a lot of information that may be confusing, so I did my best to explain everything, etc. If you're confused, message me or something, and pay careful attention to what the characters are saying!**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Six: All The Evil_

Mion looked down upon Rika, smirking at the young girl. What was she here for? Was she going to attempt to get in her way or avenge the people that she had killed? She couldn't help but laugh at the thought. Rika, a little, helpless girl, try to stop _her_? Mion scoffed as she continued to look down upon the young girl, who continued to narrow her eyes and look up with determination despite the fact that Mion was practically mocking her.

Rion appeared behind Mion's back, looking behind Rika with an oddly serious and somewhat worried expression as she scanned the young girl up and down, though Mion paid no attention to what the goddess was doing.

"Stop right there, Sonozaki Shion. This is as far as you will go," Rika informed Mion as she stretched her arms apart, which did no good, as Mion could have easily walked right by the small girl. However, feeling generous for some reason, Mion decided to stand her ground and listen to whatever it was that the girl had to say. "You've killed everyone in this group, but you won't kill me. With Keiichi, your line of murders will end here."

Mion chuckled a little bit, "so, you're here to try to stop me? Well, I'd say there isn't really much more to stop. I got… yeah… I got what I needed…" Yeah, that was it. There was nothing more for her to do in this world. She felt odd leaving just her and Rika, but… she figured she could spare Rika. She didn't do anything wrong. In fact, she didn't do anything at all aside from sit there and look completely depressed. "I killed them because they needed to die. Because Rena here—" Mion spat with disgust "—took my Kei-chan from me, and Kei-chan betrayed me. They _deserved_ to die. Ahaha… Ahaha… yeah… they deserved it… just like… just like how I deserve to…" Mion wondered what she was going to do now, briefly, before coming to the conclusion that there wasn't anything else to do. All there was to do was leave this cursed, corrupt world, which was certainly not perfect…

Rika looked deep into Mion's eyes, and she nodded to herself. "Sonozaki Shion, I warned you about this."

Mion looked extremely puzzled for a few seconds, before her mind finally snapped back to distant memory in the classroom, something that she should have perhaps paid more attention to…

_Rika turned towards the door and began to walk away, though when she was directly in front of it, she froze right up. "Shii," Rika spoke in a tone that was unlike her usual one, one that was much more serious than how she spoke._

_ Mion blinked. "Yes?" she asked._

_ Rika turned to her ever so slightly, just so that she could see one of her purple eyes and her slight smile. "Please be careful and don't be reckless about your decisions, okay?" she spoke, this time her voice sounding much more suiting for a girl her age, though there was something chilling about it, something that caused a shiver to run through the older girl._

_ "Yes, of course," Mion answered, nodding firmly._

_ "Thank you," the young girl replied, smiling gently at her before finally walking out of the door and out of Mion's sight._

That was a warning? …Now that Mion remembered it, her mind slammed with pain at the memory, scratching at her and yelling as it tried to figure out just what she meant by it. Be careful, and don't be reckless with her decisions… about what? What did Rika want Mion to know by those words?

"You didn't listen," Rika said, sorrow in her tone. "If you had listened… then maybe this world wouldn't have turned out like this."

Mion felt screaming within her as she heard those words. Yeah, yeah… if she had been careful and listened to Rika… that could have saved things too, huh? Everything was pointing to her. A trembling hand reached out to her throat and began to itch at it, tearing harder than she probably should. Yet again, it was her fault. Yeah… everything was her fault. Everything. She could have saved Satoshi, she could have helped Satoko, she could have prevented Rena and Keiichi's relationship, and she could have stopped _everything _just by listening to Rika.

"_I'm sorry_," Mion spoke in a hushed tone, her eyes wide and her voice filled with weeks and weeks of trauma. "It's my fault. I caused everything. I could have saved him. I could have saved Satoshi. I could have saved Satoko. I could have… I could have prevented this with Rena and Kei-chan. I could have kept my Kei-chan. I could have prevented you from becoming depressed. I could have stopped everything. But I didn't. It's all my fault. I'm sorry… it's my fault… I'm sorry… it's my fault… I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sor—"

"—Hold it!" Rika shouted with such intensity in her voice that it caused Mion to freeze right in her tracks. "Shion, I want you to answer me. Just what did Mion tell you in the torture chamber that made you think that?"

Mion's eyes went wider than before. "How did… how did… you weren't there… you know…"

Rika nodded firmly. "I know about that, and I know about what happened to Satoko, and how you killed Mi—"

"—_NO!_" shouted Mion before Rika could even finish the name of her sister. She felt her hand reaching up to her neck again, her nails digging into her flesh. No, not her sister… no… she didn't want to hear about that… about how she had killed her sister… "No… how did… how did you know about that…"

Meanwhile, Rion was gritting her teeth as she thought hard about something Mion didn't know or care about. What she was doing right now didn't matter…

Rika sighed. "I have my sources, Shion, but let's not dig deeper than that. Tell me what Mion told you."

Mion looked down, her eyes wide as they filled up with the words and memories that Shion had told her last night. "I could have saved him. I could have. But I didn't. Satoshi-kun loved me, and if I had said something to him, then maybe… then maybe he would have… ha…. Maybe… maybe he wouldn't have gone inside… Yeah, that was it. I could have saved Satoko, too… but it was my fault… because I didn't do anything. I sat there and watched… I just watched as everything happened around me..." she choked out, her voice full of pain. As she spoke each word, the harsh tone of Shion rammed into her mind, causing her to wince in pain and fear at the thought of her sister, holding the knife in her hand as she screamed threats at her…"Yeah, and I made him fall in love with me. I don't know how. But I hurt Shion. I could have stopped that. I could have stopped her from killing Satoko and trying to kill me if I had made Satoshi fall in love with her, but I didn't even try to do a thing. I didn't _mean_ to! I didn't _want_ to! I just wanted…" as she rambled on and on, her chest heaved with each word, and her eyes grew with more pain. "…Kei-chan."

Rika sighed. "It's not your fault, Shion. There was nothing you could have done for him at that point. As much as you tried to help him, things were already futile. If you held him, would that make his uncle and aunt go away? If you had kissed him, would that chase away the abuse and months of pain piled up on him? No, it wouldn't. And besides, what good what it have done for you? You would hurt Shion that way. You would have hurt Kei-chan that way. Either way, it ends badly." She looked right up into the eyes of the green-haired girl with her own strangely serious ones, seemingly staring right into her soul. _"It wasn't your fault."_

Those words hit Mion like a stone to the head, but she instantly gritted her teeth and balled her hands into fists. "How in the world would _you_ know, now?" challenged Mion.

"I've seen it a thousand times over, Shion," she said, wisdom in her tone. "I know better than anyone else that it was inevitable."

Rion studied Rika closely, or rather, the air behind Rika closely. She was narrowing her eyes with a very confused expression on her face, and one that looked somewhat annoyed in a way.

"What do you—" Mion asked, suspicion and fear in her tone.

"Now isn't the time for questions, Shion. Know it wasn't your fault," she started. Right as Mion was about to ask another question and perhaps relax just a little bit, Rika continued on. "—But also know that Shion is right in another way. If you had listened to my warning and been more careful about the choices that you made… this wouldn't have happened."

Mion gritted her teeth and felt a knife being stabbed right through her heart, and confusing piling and pouring about like never before. So, was it her fault or not? Rika had been referring to her choices, and she had made bad choices, and that was why Satoshi disappeared… right? But before, she was saying that it was futile and that Satoshi couldn't be saved regardless… but…

"Think about this, Shion! When did this all start? What was the decision you made before all this went wrong?" Rika cried out, an odd amount of power in her tone that Mion wouldn't suspect to come from the young girl.

What… was the decision she made before it all went wrong? Mion thought back as far as her brain would let her. It all started when Rena transferred, right? But that wasn't a decision; she didn't ask Rena to transfer or anything like that. So, before that, what had happened? A decision, a decision…

Finally, it hit her.

Just a few days before Rena's transfer, she had decided something, hadn't she? On the same day that Rika had warned her…

_ "It's perfect…" Mion whispered. "It's all perfect, Rion."_

_ Rion suddenly appeared with those words, looking at the girl with a look of surprise on her face. "Really?" she cried. "It is really all perfect now? Everything is how you want it to be?"_

_ Mion nodded. "Yes," she answered, "I'm with Keiichi now, Satoko's a part of the group, Shion and Satoshi are going to get together soon… it's everything I could wish for, Rion. This world is the perfect world now," she decided, a spark of confidence in her voice as she spoke those words. "I know it is."_

Mion was slammed with regret the moment she recalled that decision. How stupid and blind could she be? This world was anything but perfect. If only she could go back and slap her past self in the face and scream about the worlds of suffering that she would face…

But something still didn't make sense. "Why should that change anything?" Mion asked, confusion in her tone. Her head was getting a little bit clearer from the murderous thoughts now, thankfully, but she still didn't comprehend much of this. "It was just me stating that I thought it was perfect…"

"—Shion, it was the decision I was referring to. I didn't want you to do that. It's because of that that everything went wrong, because you decided that tis world was perfect! Because of that, because of that—" Rika gritted her teeth and shook her head, looking down at the floor. After a few moments, she jerked her head back up. "But you didn't know. You had no way of knowing. …I forgive you for that, for there is someone else who is truly responsible for this mess… only one person to blame for the corruption of this world… and it's not you."

One person to blame… one person… but if it wasn't her… then who? Mion scanned her thoughts frantically. Rena? Was it her fault for moving here? Mion shook her head, biting her lip. No, if it were Rena's fault, then how in the world was Satoko and Satoshi's abuse related to it? That was her fault because she—No, Mion had to remind herself that it wasn't her fault, that since Rika said it wasn't, she should just say it wasn't. But… it was her fault… wasn't it? Yeah, wasn't Rika lying? Yeah, that had to be it—

"_Shion!_" shouted Rika. "Think about it. Why did Rena transfer when she showed no signs of it before? Why did Satoko suddenly break when she showed no signs of it before? Why did Satoshi suddenly have a crush on you when he showed interest in Shion just days before, and when you were so convinced that he would go out with her? What made you suddenly become jealous of Rena, even when this kind of interaction wouldn't bother you in the slightest usually?" Once again with her powerful gaze, Rika locked eyes with Mion, and for a moment, the green-haired girl felt like they had seen into each other's souls.

Yeah… why did those things happen? She had thought about it before, but didn't think much of it. It never made any sense to her. Rena was happy with her parents before, so why did she suddenly come here? Why did Satoko suddenly break, when she was so strong before, even after Mion had fixed her by trying to get her to join the group? That shouldn't have taken away her ability to hold herself up. And Satoshi… well, she figured it would make sense that he would have a crush on her after all she did for him, but as she flashed back to days before the confession, she realized how much she truly thought Satoshi and Shion liked each other. He was always with her, laughing with her, chatting with her, doing work with her…

So why, then, did things suddenly change? What made it change? Did Satoko just reach her limit, even though she showed no signs of it just days before she did? Did Rena's family just suddenly fall apart, even when Rion had shown her such a happy image of how things were back at home for her? Did Satoshi just randomly decide that he loved her more than he loved Shion? For some reason, Mion doubted that such a thing would happen, and if that was so, it wouldn't be so sudden in a day's time like it had been. Well, not really a day's time, but it had felt like day to Mion, certainly…

Mion figured that there had to be some kind of connection between the events, but try as she might, she was unable to form some sort of connection. Rena's appearance had nothing to do with Satoshi's abuse, and had she not appeared, it would have probably happened anyways. Was there some major event that linked to her decision to make the world perfect that had to do with something that changed and then caused all that to happen? But what would cause Satoshi's attention to focus on Mion rather than Shion and Rena to transfer in?

"I…" Mion choked out… "I don't…"

Rika narrowed her eyes at the girl. "Come on, Shion! Think… If not something that triggered it, something similar… something that happened to you, to Satoshi… to Rena…"

Something that had happened? Well, Rena had moved because of her parent's divorce, and she had no idea what exactly made Satoko and Satoshi so weak all of a sudden, but… had there been something similar that had happened? Rika mentioned that it happened to her, too, but… No. She had to think. She had to think harder about this. There had to be another connection between Satoshi's break down and Rena's transfer, right? If not the same exact trigger, at least a trigger of a similar kind…

What made Rena want to move to Hinamizawa? What made Satoshi want to run away from Hinamizawa?

No. That was it. _That was it. _The reason why Rena had moved back to Hinamizawa was because she said that she felt Oyashiro's presence beside her, threatening to curse her if she didn't come back, and the reason why Satoshi left was because he was scared of the curse, or perhaps, because he was hit by the curse. Either way, it all came down to one thing. And suddenly, something all made sense. The perfect world. Why all these things that shouldn't have happened did.

Something that Mion should have realized a long time ago. Why, why did this all have to come to her now? …The culprit… the reason behind this corruption… Had been right behind her the whole time.

Mion breathed up and down, standing completely still with her eyes full of realization. Fear was gripping at her, pulling at her with its fingers, ripping at her very soul and making her tremble. All she could do was look at the young girl before her as she shuddered a bit in place, finding that her muscles refused to listen to her. Rika just gave her a slow nod, seriousness in her face as she stared right into Mion's eyes. And slowly, right there, Mion finally gave herself the strength to turn around.

Rion stood there, completely still, horror in her eyes.

"You…" whispered Mion, "you're…"

Rion looked horribly surprised, nothing but innocence and shock in her green eyes.

"You…" That appeared to be the only word Mion could choke out, even as she stared right into the god's eyes, fear shaking her very core. She didn't want to think it. She didn't want to believe it.

Rion's innocent surprise curled into a cruel smirk, staring at Mion with eyes that she decided had to contain all the evil in the world. She giggled a bit to herself before she burst out into a mad laughter that echoed throughout the night, causing stabs of fear of the worst kind to jam within her, running up and down her nerves like nails screeching against chalkboard. She held her chest as she flung her head back, barely able to control her laughter anymore. It took her moments to remain herself, and when she did, she looked up with a horrifying grin. "Damn you, Furude Rika!" cursed out Rion as she slammed a foot down on the floor. "I was going to play with her a few years longer! I was gonna have a lot of _fun_! You made me skip a few thousand years!"

Rika gritted her teeth. "You were right, Hanyuu," she whispered to a spot beside her. "you were _right…_"

Mion stood there, confusion and hurt like never before spiraling about in her brain. She had no idea how to take any of this. An ally who she had relied on this whole time had turned around and betrayed her, and suddenly, there was this whole mystery about Rika. What was she talking about? And finally, there was one question that burned in Mion's mind, one question that ripped right through her as hot tears began to form in her eyes. _Why?_

Rion smiled. "I guess I'm gonna have to win that back from you now. What a boring way to start my rule out." She smirked again, and with a swipe of her hand, the god who Mion had trusted and relied on all this time was gone. What appeared to be an explosion of light surrounded Rion, and Mion, barely being able to process anything that was going on as she stared dumbfounded at the scene before her, just stood there. It wasn't until she felt a forceful tug pulling her backwards was she able to move her legs as the light shrunk, and at the same time, grew into another shape.

Rika gripped her arm tightly as Mion started in complete shock and devastation at the light before her. As it faded, Rion's figure became visible, or rather, her new figure. She had grown from a nine-year-old girl to an adult around the age of thirty. She eyed both Mion and Rika with twisted, dark eyes full of power, and it appeared to Mion that darkness swirled within them. Two, shining, white horns curled around from the sides of her head, both of them looking completely new and untouched, compared to the goddess's former state of having only one horn. Her yellow-green hair had extended down to her waist, and fingernails sharper than they should be lay at the end of each of her hands. As Mion looked at her, the image of the demon she saw in Satoshi's eyes popped in her mind, and suddenly, she understood just why he had seen that image.

"I missed this form. I missed it much too much," Rion commented as she ran her long fingernails through locks of her green hair. "It's a shame you had to take it away from me… isn't that right, Hanyuu?"

The next thing Mion knew, there was a flash of light behind her, and a girl Mion instantly recognized appeared behind her. She looked to be no older than nine, but with knowledge of who Rion was, Mion instantly knew it had to be wrong. She had light purple hair that reached down to her waist, but perhaps what was most noticeable was her two, black horns coming from the side of her head, one of which was chipped slightly.

"Hanyuu…" Mion whispered as confusion hit her harder than before. Just what she needed. All this was buzzing in her mind, and just nothing was making sense. It was impossible for her to think. Hanyuu was a former member of the club who had left one day, but now… here she was. And with a single look, Mion now knew just who she was, and just what kind of power she had brought to the club when she had joined.

Rika moved out of the way as she allowed for Hanyuu to take a step forward. There was rage burning in Hanyuu's eyes, similar to the fire that was within her when she faced Takano's gun, but this time, it seemed to be larger and hotter. "Rion!" shouted Hanyuu. "Stop this right now! Do you want me to lock you and condemn you to the further, darker worlds like I did after you murdered Masumi!"

Rion just laughed at her. "As if you could do that anymore! Hanyuu, you're powerless! That power you've kept from me… I've taken it all back. There's nothing that you can do about it now. You're truly cunning, though, I must admit." She smiled as she walked up towards the now much smaller goddess, grinning down at her with darkness in that horribly twisted smile of hers. "You knew what I was up to and you came to this world before I could shut you out. I knew that something was up with Rika, but hell, I didn't bother much with it. I should have killed you the moment I realized something was wrong."

Hanyuu smirked a bit, but it was clear that she was afraid. "Well, I'm glad you didn't, then. I suppose there would be no chance for me to take all that back, then."

Anger flared in Rion's eyes. "No chance?" she roared out, "there's already no chance! Now that I've got this power back, there's nothing you can do, nothing! The universes and power belong to me now, Hanyuu! If you want, you can try to stop… but…" She turned around and took a few steps forward, then whipping around again. "It's just going to make it more fun for me. It's kind of entertaining to watch, you know? Like watching mice running on those wheels. They think they're going somewhere, perhaps, but in truth, they just look like fools running nowhere in place, and children sure seem to be entertained by that!" Rion shot them another grin, this time more twisted than ever before. "So try! But Hanyuu… you're already finished!"

Mion watched with pure horror as Rion extended her arm out and let a flash of light grow within her palm. Hanyuu's eyes grew wide with fear, but she did not hesitate a moment. Right as the light seemed to begin to launch itself towards Mion, Hanyuu, and Rika, the purple-haired goddess leapt for Mion, pulling her tightly as she wrapped her arms around her. That was when the light shot began to envelop them.

And with a flash, Mion's world turned black.

_~~~~X~~~~_

When she opened her eyes again, Mion did not instantly know where she was, only that she was not within the cursed, corrupt world she had been for so long. In fact, it appeared as if she was in no world at all. She was floating. Just floating. The world around her was completely black aside from fragments that float around her, spinning about as they reflected many scenes before her. Some of them, she recognized. A certain, dark fragment with cracks forming down its side seemed to show images of days that had just passed, with the glaring pictures of Mion brutally murdering Keiichi and Rena, of Shion murdering Satoko…

Where was she? Mion looked around, but she couldn't determine that. Was she dreaming?

"You're not dreaming," a voice that she instantly recognized as Hanyuu's echoed out, and she whipped around to look at the god. "You're in the space between worlds, just outside of the world that Rion dragged you in. That's that one, over there." She pointed a finger to the dark, breaking fragment. "I managed to grab you just in time, but I don't have much time before Rion pulls you back in. I can only stop time for so long."

"St…stop time?" Mion repeated, confusion in her tone. She knew that alternate universes and gods existed, but all this around her was just too much to swallow.

Hanyuu nodded. "You see, as Rion explained to you, there are three Oyashiros. There's me, the Oyashiro that rules the Furude Family, who is bound to Rika. There _was_ Masumi, who was the Oyashiro of the Kimiyoshi family, but she was murdered. And then… there's Rion. You know her already. Oyashiro of the Sonozaki family. Bound to you."

Mion nodded slowly. She should just take things slow and listen to Hanyuu. She was surely going to explain everything…

"First of all, I have to apologize," Hanyuu said, regret in her tone. "Because I know this is all coming as a shock to you, to see your former club member here, and suddenly she's a god..." She shook her head. "I had a good time in your club, Mion. I'm sorry."

She was taken aback by the sudden apology. Why did Hanyuu need to apologize for something like that? Sure, it was sort of shocking when she thought about it, but... now wasn't the time to be concerned about that. "No, it's fine," Mion said. "You don't need to apologize at all, Hanyuu..."

Hanyuu cracked a smile. "Au au! That makes me happy to hear!" she cried out.

"I'm sure you know how limited Rion's power was when you first came to the world, don't you?" It was another voice, this time belonging to Rika, who Mion realized was standing right behind her. The younger girl stepped around her to take her place right next to Hanyuu, looking over at the god. "Very limited. All she had the power to do was show images and pull you into that world. That was the extent of what she could do."

Hanyuu nodded in acknowledgement to the girl she was connected to. "That's right. We spilt the power up and hid most of it away to prevent one of us becoming too powerful and taking over the others if she wanted to. However, we were kept enough power to allow ourselves to be bound to one human being under very specific circumstances and Masumi had the power over nature, I had the power over time, and Rion had the power over life. It's the power we have attached to ourselves, and the power that no one can steal forcefully… unless we die."

Mion blinked and just nodded.

"Rion was never in the right mind. I should have known something was off… but I trusted her anyways. I thought she had turned to good, but she hadn't." Hanyuu looked directly into Mion's eyes, making sure she took in the information. "We all gained the title of god in a separate way, Mion, and while mine was through sacrificing myself, Rion's was through ambition. Murder. Power. Now, I wasn't born into the Furude family, but I am still the god and protector of it. Rion, unlike me, was born into the Sonozaki family." Hanyuu paused for a moment to let Mion think a bit. It was all a bit much for her, but she knew that she had to listen. "Actually, Mion, she's the same as you."

That statement puzzled Mion. The same as her? "What do you mean?" she asked.

"The poor, unfortunate, second-born twin of the Sonozaki family. Rion may have mentioned her sister to you a few times. Rion's sister was her older twin by just a few minutes, and because of that, she was guaranteed the position as family head and was to inherit it." Hanyuu sighed. "Rion was outraged. She pretended it didn't bother her, but it did. In the shadows, she hated, and in the shadows, she plotted. One day, she marched right up and murdered her father, then murdering her sister. She blamed the murder on a servant, and by her pure wit and set up, she convinced them. Then, she took the title of head of herself, and under her rule, Onigafuchi was corrupted."

Hanyuu sighed and shook her head again. "Yet, no one could tell, because everyone respected her so much and would never think that she was the cause of anything. So, Masumi took it into her own hands and fought Rion. Rion fell, and through the power she had gained and her title in the village, she claimed the position of Oyashiro. I thought that she had learned her lesson, but I was wrong." Hanyuu's hands balled up into fists. "She played with the humans in the worlds that she prayed upon like as if they were toys. She would follow them, scare them, and with her own power, bend life with her will. She would watch as those worlds corrupted slowly. What fun it was for her… but you know, she wasn't strong enough. Life itself she could play with, but she was limited. She wanted all the power. So, she murdered Masumi and took her power into her hands. She wanted mine as well, but I stopped her in her tracks. I took the hidden power we have stored and banished her to further worlds, worlds like the one that you were just in, Mion. I removed her powers and hid them far, far, far away where she could never get them. That's where I thought I had defeated her a second time."

Mion gritted her teeth together as she learned the true tale behind the god she thought she could trust. How was she so dark and twisted on the inside, and why did she never notice? Her heart was heavy with the scar of betrayal, which seemed to tear at her every growing second.

"And that, Sonozaki Mion, is where the darkness of Oyashiro-sama comes from. When you hear about the evil, dark side of Oyashiro, that is Rion. She is the part of Oyashiro that is full of darkness, she is the part of Oyashiro that is said to be murderous... She is all the evil in Hinamizawa." She looked down at her feet. "And I thought I had finally banished her..."

Mion's heart became heavy as she thought about the many times Rion would talk about how she was scared of the legends of Oyashiro that people created in her name, when she was the only one to blame for it.

Rika looked over to Hanyuu, a frown on her face. "There was one thing that Hanyuu didn't consider, though. Under very specific circumstances, as we mentioned before, a god will be bound to a human in the family they watch over, just like how Hanyuu is connected to me." She nodded in Hanyuu's direction. "I'm called the reincarnation of Oyashrio-sama because I am the eighth first born girl in a row in the Furude family, which is the circumstance that ties Hanyuu to a human. What Hanyuu realized but thought she had taken care of, was Rion's circumstances." She looked right at Mion again with that powerful stare, which seemed to pierce right through her. "…After Rion's death, it was ruled that the second-born twin in the Sonozaki family must be murdered. It was said to be because it was considered a sign of bad luck, but in truth, Rion could tie herself to the second born twin. And, Mion, being the second born twin of the Sonozaki family, that was you."

Mion blinked. She remembered Rion mentioning a few things like that before, but she claimed she didn't know the answer. She bit her lip as she recalled a few other things that Rion had said that she also had lied about, which had drawn her to the conclusion; the realization of what truly had been corrupting the world…

"I-I think I know what happens next," Mion stuttered out, much to their surprise. "Rion told me about the perfect world, and the "real" Hinamizawa, and how when I claimed it to be perfect, it would become the real Hinamizawa."

Hanyuu nodded. "Correct."

"That shifted the power to her, didn't it? Because she was now in the real Hinamizawa, which she couldn't access before because you had locked her out of it," Mion spoke.

Hanyuu grinned a bit. "You figured it out, didn't you? Where I went wrong, that is. I didn't consider that Rion could possibly do that, at least not recently. That when you died, Rion could pull you into her world and convince you that it was perfect so that she could grab the power. And as you now know, that's just what she did. When you deemed the world perfect, she used her powers in any small way that she could to corrupt things. She forced Rena to move. She forced Satoshi to go crazy. She forced Satoko to become weak…"

Mion bit her lip. That was Rion's true intention. When she was pulled towards this world, it was because a vicious god wanted power and wanted to use her and corrupt her for it. She forced her to stay strong many times in that world when it came to Keiichi and anything else, but… that wasn't because she wanted to be nice. It was because she knew that when Mion deemed it perfect, the power would be hers to take, that she would be able to get her revenge.

"We had a bit of an… interesting struggle before with worlds," Rika started, her tone laced with darkness and years of pain. "You died many times, but Hanyuu knew how to block Rion then so that she could protect your spirit. However, she didn't expect you to die when you fell off that cliff, as we had already deemed that world as perfect and Hanyuu had no intention of corrupting it. That was the moment of weakness Rion grabbed you at. For a while, Hanyuu and I didn't suspect anything, but…" Rika shook her head. "We came right before you deemed the world perfect. We shifted worlds and snuck by Rion right before it was too late to save things."

Mion didn't know what to make of all this. Now that she knew she was being manipulated from behind the whole time, she felt like a fool. She could have stopped it; she could have saved the world. It really was her fault, wasn't it? Even if it was Rion pulling the strings, it was her fault. Shion was right, wasn't she…? If only… if only she weren't so foolish… if only she could go back and fix things.

"We don't have much longer before time unfreezes and Rion can pull you back. Rion has no control over my time power, as much as she takes other power from me, it's the one thing she can't take fully. Listen to me. There's one way we can beat Rion," Hanyuu said, seriousness in her tone. The way she told Mion the words instantly showed her that there was no time for fooling around, and no time to waste. As a god that controlled time, she would be the one to know that.

"This is what I'm going to do. Mion, I'm going to send you back in time," Hanyuu informed Mion.

Mion's eyes blinked in surprise. "H-Huh…?"

Hanyuu nodded. "Yes. Because my powers are weakening, I can't just take you all the way back from the day before you came into this world and make you stop the you from this world from committing suicide. I have to take you back to each event in reverse order that they occurred in, and you have to undo every single change you made to this world. This will stop Rion's corruption from ever happening. Finally, when you jump off the cliff and kill yourself at the end, you'll be back in your own world."

Mion's heart flooded with relief at those last words. Home. She could go home! Back where everything was normal, back where her friends were waiting for her… back where they loved her. Back where they needed her. A tear trickled down her cheek at the thought of home, and how much she missed it. She was a fool for ever thinking that this world was better.

…But it was a tough task she had to complete. Undo every change she did to the world…?

"That's right. Undo every change to did to this world," Hanyuu said, repeating Mion's thoughts as if she could read them. "Meaning, starting from the order you'll have to visit the scenes in, you have to do the following. Prevent yourself from murdering Rena and Keiichi, prevent yourself from murdering Shion, prevent Satoshi from falling in love with you, prevent Satoko from ever becoming the way she did, prevent Keiichi from ever falling in love with you, prevent your transfer. Finally, at the very end, you will have to jump off a cliff just like you did in the beginning and kill yourself." Mion looked alarmed, but Hanyuu held up a hand and silenced any words she had. "You won't die. You'll end up back in your own world. I promise you. Then, Rion's power will go away, and everything will be back to normal… and then, I will have learned my lesson a third time, and Rion shall never attempt such a dirty scheme again."

Mion slowly nodded her head, though somewhat shakily. She had to undo all of that? How was she going to do that? Well… she supposed that she would find out… but it would be tough. Either way, she wanted to go home so badly that it killed her, so she knew she had to do it, otherwise she would literally be killed a thousand times over. "I'm going to do it, Hanyuu. I'm going to stop her and I'm going to go home."

Hanyuu smiled. "You will. Now, time is almost up. I'll be sending you off now. Do this for us, for Rika and I."

Rika nodded her head, grinning. "You can do it, club leader Sonozaki Mion!" She then wore her usual, cute Rika smile that would make Rena burst out into "take it home mode." "Nipah~!" she beamed out as sweetly and adorably as she possibly could.

Mion nodded, this time more firmly and confidently. "Yes!" she cried out, triumph in her voice. "I can do it! I'll do it for both of you, for us, for me, and for all of Hinamizawa!"

Hanyuu grinned. "Good luck, my club leader!"

And with a wave of Hanyuu's hand and a flash of light, Mion was off.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

…**! I think at some point some of you realized Rion was up to no good, but who stuck to that conclusion to the end? I was dropping hints at her scheme every here and there so that you would all understand and get a hint of what she was probably trying to do from behing the scenes, and it all adds up to this. Tell me your thoughts! By the way, Rion was originally just going to be downright evil from the beginning. The first Rion was kind of harsh and cold, but then I changed it so that she was much the same, just sort of on a neutral side. She wasn't bad or good. Just doing whatever she felt like. Finally, I switched back, and now you have this Rion.**

**Please review and share your thoughts! I'll update soon! I can't wait for camp! Tomorrow is a busy day. We have to pack my trunk completely. Yay… And my internet has been so funny since yesterday. I hope I can even UPLOAD this! *kicks internet***

**~Crimso**


	38. Chapter 37: Setting it Right

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Oh gee. I have so little time to finish this. Luckily, this is the second to last chapter (or the last, haha… we'll see what happens when I write it) so hopefully I can get it done. I will try to write today, tomorrow, and then maybe the epilogue two days later. …Though, I got the new Pokemon game (if you don't know yet, I kind of really love Pokemon… go laugh if you want) called Pokemon Conquest, and it's just way too addicting. I played it for four hours straight or something yesterday. I played it starting at ten PM and stopped when I thought it was twelve. No, it was two AM in the morning. Oops.**

**SHORT CHAPTER WARNING! Baha, sorry.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Seven: Setting it Right _

When Mion's eyes opened, she found herself at a familiar scene that happened only minutes before. She recognized the dark woods, and she recognized two figures in the distance, chatting with each other about one thing or another. Rena and Keiichi… and they certainly weren't talking about anything romantic or anything. Mion tugged at the collar of her shirt as a lump of regret filled her stomach and throat, feeling horribly guilty for what she did. What in the world was she thinking?

_"Mion? Can you hear me? It's Hanyuu,"_ a voice in her head seemed to echo out.

Surprised, Mion responded. _"Yeah, I can hear you."_

If Hanyuu was standing in front of her, she was sure that she would be smiling. _"Good! I can't appear to you, but I can communicate with you like this. Remember what the plan is. You have to prevent yourself from changing anything in this world, and we're going backwards because that's the only way that I can do it right now. The only rule is that no matter what, Mion, you can't kill anyone at all, _especially_ not yourself. Do you understand?" _she said in a stern tone.

Mion nodded. _"I got it. Don't worry, I won't."_

_ "That's good! Now, one thing. I suspect that Rion had realized what I've done by now and she's trying to break in and grab you, but her time powers are extremely limited. If she breaks in every now and then, don't be alarmed. She can hardly use her powers to stay there for very long, so I believe that it would only take a little over a few minutes for her to disappear entirely. If you see her, run. Don't get close. Don't let her do anything to you, and certainly don't let her try to take you away, though I doubt she has enough power to do that either."_

Mion nodded and gulped. Rion… how was she supposed to fight off a sadistic god? She felt her heart lurch when she thought that, remembering how sweet Rion used to be to her… and having to remember that everything that she had said in the past was just an act. _"Okay. I'll make sure of that."_

"_Then you're all set! You have a few minutes until the you from this time arrives and tries to attack Rena and Keiichi. Use it wisely. Do whatever you can to stop her from killing them, but don't kill her, of course! Good luck. I'll be here watching._" The voice within her head faded, and Mion realized that she was all alone. She had no one to rely on in this situation except for her herself, and the fate of Hinamizawa's worlds was now on her hands. If she were to fail…

Mion shook her head. She couldn't think that like. There was so much pressure on her shoulders, but she still couldn't think like that. She just had to do what she could. After all, she was Sonozaki Mion. What could Sonozaki Mion not do?

She crouched down in the nearby woods and waited. Her eyes focused a little ways down the path, where she knew she would be coming from. Moving over a little bit so that she could get a closer look and a better chance to jump out, Mion made sure that no one was coming yet. She only had one shot at this, and she had to make sure that it counted.

She reached for the ribbons in her hair and tugged them out, then tying her hair into a long, flowing ponytail. She still had the same clothing that Mion had, but would Mion really care too much when she was in an insane state of mind? Just the ponytail was enough to make her recognize who she would pretend to be. Mion cringed at the thought. She had to be Shion pretending to be her... Well, that was most certainly odd…

Her heart rate quickened when she noticed herself coming down the path. She nodded once, and stood up. With a quick dash, she jumped out in front of the insane, confused girl, who only looked even more confused and a little bit scared when she spotted the girl that now stood in front of her.

"No… N-Not again! What do you want from me?" she demanded, screeching out to the night. Mion had to cringe when she listened to how she sounded. She was insane. To think that she was exactly the same way moments ago… it scared her. "I already apoglozied! Do you want me to apologize again? Ahaha… no… I-It's… my fault… Ahaha… I know already…! Leave me alone…!"

Mion did not understand the flow of her other self's thought, but then again, did she in that moment? Mion shook her head. She had to act like she was some sort of creepy image in her other self's mind right now, so she needed to start right now and not waste a single moment. As her face twisted into a cruel smirk, she became very thankful for those many years she spent switching places with her twin. They had taught her how to be quite the actress. "You thought that I would leave you alone?" she hissed out, stepping forward to look at her horrified self with pure malice in her eyes. "Are you running away, Shion? You're such a coward. Can you not accept that it was your fault? Aha… Satoshi-kun's going to be _so_ upset…"

The other Mion stepped backwards and shook her head. "No!" she yelled out, "it was my fault, I admit it! It was my fault, it was my fault, it was my fault, it was my fault, it was my fault…" Mion wondered why her other self found it effective to repeat that phrase a thousand times, but she didn't worry about those details. "I already admitted it! I know it's my fault! So just leave me alone!"

Mion took another step forward, causing the other Mion to take a step backwards. "I won't ever leave you, Shion, don't you understand? We're sisters… even though I'm dead in this cold basement… aha… we're still sisters! I'm gonna stay with you forever, Shion, until you apologize for real… and even then, I'll stick by you and make you beg for mercy as you suffer… aha… I'm not going to be satisfied until you're dead…!" she laughed out, beginning to fake some kind of crazy laughter. How she was so good at it, she had no idea, but it sort of worried her.

"N-No… just… leave…! Leave, leave, leave! Leave me alone! You're dead, you can't be here anymore…!" shouted the other Mion, the horror in her eyes growing by the second. She began to take a few more steps back, and Mion could easily tell that she was about to run by the stance that she had, by the tension she had…

Mion stepped up towards her other self, placing a finger on her chin as she stared directly into her eyes with a horridly twisted grin on her face. "It's not going to help to beg… I'm staying here… forever, and ever, and ever… I'm going to stay here until I get my revenge…! So…" Mion traced her fingers down her other self's arms and to the knife in her hand, easily snatching it away. She pointed the knife at her other self in a taunting way, though with no intention of harming her. "Ahaha… Satoshi-kun, watch! Aha… you're going to love this…!"

"No…" the other Mion repeated, stepping backwards even more at a quicker pace. "No… no… no… no!" She turned around and ran down the dirt path, and just to make sure that she wouldn't come back again, Mion chased her other self down the path with the knife in hand, wearing that same evil smirk on her face. She ran right down the paths until they ended right back up at the Sonozaki Manor, which the other Mion then entered and slammed the door shut, locking it tightly. Deciding to taunt her sister a little more to make sure she didn't try anything again, Mion approached the door.

She scratched her nails down the door, pressing her head close to it. "Open the door… aha… It's useless, Shion. Even if you hide… I can still get you…!" She practically tore at the door with her fingernails, creating horrible shrieking sounds. She was sure the other Mion was probably freaking out on the other side of the door, but there was no way to tell, so she kept running her fingers down the door. Then, she placed the blade of the knife to the door, running it down it, creating more sounds. "I'm still here, Shion…! And I'm always going to be here… Ahaha… I'm going to be here until Satoshi-kun gets his revenge…"

She heard scurrying from the other side of the door, and it was then that she was sure that the other Mion wouldn't be back. She sighed in relief as she turned around and began to walk away from the door, through the gardens of the manor. _"I did it, Hanyuu. It's all over over here!"_

"_Good job! I must say, you make a very scary hallucination… aha!" _Hanyuu joked. _"Anyways, close your eyes. We're going to the next scene. Just remember the rules again… don't kill anyone."_

Light enveloped Mion, and the next thing that she knew, she was off to another scene, one that was for sure going to be more complicated than the last…

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion's eyes opened, and she noticed that she was standing in the middle of the underground Sonozaki Basement. With a sigh, she looked around at her surrondings, and found only her other self sitting within a cell, crushed on the floor. It seemed that she was knocked out, but there was no way to be sure. Through a crack in the door that she knew contained Shion, she was able to spot her sister standing in front of the restraining board, where Satoko hung from. She was trembling in her restraints, while Shion was just laughing to herself and shouting taunts here and there.

The whole place was pretty dark, and the atmosphere was not very pleasant, to say the very least. Of course, that went without saying, as no one usually found a torture chamber comforting. Mion looked about, trying to determine what part of the scene she was at, but she couldn't, for this wasn't a part of her memory. She hadn't yet awoken, and it would be a while before Shion would walk out and stop taunting poor Satoko. Some of the things that she was saying to the little girl were quite horrible, and they made her cringe. That poor, poor Satoko... She hated her sister when she was like this. It just wasn't Shion.

"You think that Satoshi is going to come and save you? Well, think again," Shion told the little girl. "He's not here anymore. And you wanna know why…?" Shion reached out and slapped Satoko hard across the cheek, causing her to screech out. "Because of you, you little brat...!"

Satoko yelled. "No, no, no! It's not...!"

Another slap echoed out from the room. "IT WAS! STOP LYING, YOU LITTLE BRAT! I can't wait to see your guts on the floor... but we're going to have to wait for the audience to wake up, hm~?" Shion practically sang in a taunting voice.

Mion was distracted by the cell containing her other self, where she had begun to wake up. "Rion…?" the her other self spoke out into the darkness. "Rion, are you there…?"

She remembered having this fight, and she couldn't bear to watch it a second time. Her yelling at Rion for being useless only hurt more now that she knew that Rion's plan was to make herself not useless, and from the moment that she declared the world perfect, Rion could have done anything to fix something that went wrong. However, she was the reason why everything went wrong in the first place…

Mion knew that shortly, Shion would finish taunting and yelling at poor Satoko, and that she would then be heading to taunt her sister. That was her chance. If she could hide, then she could sneak into the room with Satoko and drag her somewhere further into the torture chamber, where Shion wouldn't find her. In that room, they also had a pair of spare keys, so she could grab them and run back into the other room when Shion wasn't looking. When Shion went to go and get Satoko to kill her, then she would unlock her other self from the cage, grab Satoko, and run.

She bit her lip. This wasn't going to be easy at all, but she had to do it…

She hid behind a stack of boxes just outside the room Shion was in and waited, trying not to listen to the conversation the other Mion was having with Rion and Shion's cruel taunts, as well as Satoko's loud wails. She breathed heavily and reminded herself in a moment, that it was all going to be over, and that she didn't need to listen to Satoko's dying shrieks like she did before…

Shion walked out of the room and eyed her sister. "Oh? Awake, are we? Good, I was just getting _bored_ of waiting," Shion purred as she approached her sister in the cell. . "Aw, look at you. All locked up and helpless. It's really too bad, sister, that this had to happen, but you have to be punished for what happened."

"For what?" she heard her other self ask.

"Oh, don't tell me you don't know," Shion said, though she didn't sound surprised in the slightest. "It's really quite obvious, don't you think, sister?" As Mion looked over at her other self and her sister, she nodded her head to confirm that both of them weren't looking towards Satoko's direction. She slipped by the boxes and into the room, slowly shutting the door just a bit so that no one would look in and see her. That would give them quite a shock. Of course, she would have to surprise them at one point or another with that, but…

Satoko gasped out when she saw Mion walk into the room, and she began flailing again. "No… don't kill me! It wasn't my fault, it wasn't-!"

Mion walked up to her and put her hand on Satoko's mouth. "Keep quiet. Onee is going to hear us and then she's going to come and hurt both of us, okay? This is our only chance to escape, so don't say a word…"

Satoko looked confused, but she only nodded when she came to the conclusion that the girl in front of her couldn't be Shion. Mion removed the hand from Satoko's mouth and walked over to where a pair of keys lay, which she then stuffed into her pocket. This would open the other Mion's cell. She then walked up to Satoko and began to undo the restraints on the terrified girl, allowing her to become free and fall to the floor in a crumpled heap. She reached out a hand and helped the little girl stand up on her feet.

As Mion looked into Satoko's eyes, she found worlds of pain in them, and it stung her heart. She gritted her teeth together, trying to prevent herself from hurting from seeing so much pain. "Just keep silent and follow me. Make sure that no one sees you or anything…"

Mion's eyes darted around the room until they came to a large shovel sitting in the corner of the room. Well, that would do. She picked it up and practice swung it a few times, making sure that it wouldn't fall apart if she did something like that. "Good, this should work just fine." Mion's eyes went to the crack of the door, where she could see her other self getting screamed at by Shion.

"Now, it's time for our first show. Watch, will you, oh dear sister? It's going to be so much fun…" Shion was telling the other Mion, which caused Mion to turn towards Satoko and nod her head. That was the sign that she was coming. Mion slid out the door with Satoko behind her, hiding behind the boxes with the shovel and the pair of keys tight in her hands. If she were to unlock the other Mion from the cell, then she needed to do it as quickly as she could, and before Shion could do a thing about it.

She watched as Shion turned her horrid grin in her direction and began walking towards the door, opening it with a creek. She gestured to Satoko to stay put, and with that, she darted towards the cell containing her other self. When she reached there, she dropped the shovel down on the floor. She ignored the look of confusion that instantly spread across her other self's face as she plunged the key into the lock, twisting it until she heard it click open. She heard yells of shock and confusion coming from the other room, which forced Mion to pry the door open as quickly as she could with all her strength. She gestured to her horribly confused and somewhat relieved other self to go hide behind the boxes, but before she could, she heard footsteps.

"Where the hell did Satoko—Oh hell…" Shion's eyes went wide as she stared at two, perfectly identical clones of her sister, which filled her eyes with rage and pure confusion. "…The hell are you? Some sort of identical imposter?" She tried to shake the confusion out of her eyes as she narrowed them. "You're the one who let Satoko escape, too, aren't you? Well, you're not getting away!"

Shion ran towards them with a look of pure anger on her face and a knife in her hand. She yelled out as she prepared to stab down, but Mion was quicker. She reached for the shovel that she had dropped on the floor. When Shion came close enough, Mion ran forward and smacked her sister's back with the end of the shovel, then slamming right down on her head with all of her might with the metal part, and then the rod. Without another word, Shion fell down to the floor, knocked out.

"…She's not dead," Mion told her other self. "Just unconscious." She bent down to the floor to make sure of it, and checked her sister's pulse. When she confirmed that she was indeed still alive, she nodded her head. "Good." She stood up. "Let's get out of here, quickly, before she wakes up!"

The other Mion blinked in confusion. "Who… who are you? I'm not a triplet…"

Mion just grinned. "Nope, not a triplet. Just another person who looks like you, that's all…" That was all she could come up with as she led her confused self towards the boxes and tugged Satoko out, who then glanced at the unconscious Shion on the ground. Her face twisted with that same confusion as she looked to both Mions, trying to figure out what had happened, but right now, that wasn't what mattered.

"Let's get out of here, and quickly, too. Shion is going to wake up…"

She tugged Satoko and her other self away from the scene as they ran as fast as they could up the stairs, leaving an unconscious Shion behind to lie on the floor. As the ran up the stairs, Mion smiled to herself.

_"I think I'm done over here, Hanyuu!" _she informed the god as she ran further up the stairs, seeing light beginning to form at the stop, indicating that they were near the top and close to rescue, where Shion couldn't hurt them. _"I got them both out, and Shion's still alive!"_

_ "Au au!" _came Hanyuu's cheerful voice in Mion's head. _"That's right, you did it! That's been fixed! Now, everyone is alive again. All the hard parts are finished, as there is no more murder to prevent. Since it was Rion who caused Rena to transfer and Satoshi to go into Hinamizawa Syndrome, we don't need to fix that, only what you changed."_

Mion grinned. That was good to know. She didn't have to stop a transfer that she had no idea how it happened and a very complicated series of events that led up to her good friend disappearing.

_"Now, Mion, we're not finished here. Rion's going to break in sometime soon, and I know it… I can feel her. There's still a bit left, so hang in there, and hopefully we can get it done before Rion comes…!"_

Mion grinned. The hard part was now over. Now, she just had to do the rest… and hope that she could do it quickly enough.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**It feels wrong to end WAN just with this chapter and put all of the time travel stuff in one chapter, so I ended it there and am going to write the rest tomorrow in another chapter. That chapter, by the way, is going to be the last chapter if things go according to plan! I can hardly believe it… so close to being finished. I spent so long working on this, and it's been such a good time and such a rough time at the same time… Ahaha, that sounds odd. Anyways, look forward to it! I figured that the more dramatic, intense parts that have to do with stopping murder should be in this part and the rest in the next, so it's a little bit short, so I hope you will forgive me. **

**So, now that I'm done, I can upload this. Then, it's more Pokemon Conquest for me…! Bwahaha… all the nations are almost mine… I just don't like those (BAD CRIMSO!)ing CPUs… Always trying to invade my territory… They fail, most of the time… I also fail, a lot of the time. Strategy games are fun!**

**~Crimso**


	39. Chapter 38: Final Challenge

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**Bah. I beat Pokemon Conquest, but the after storylines still remain. Sadly, for all of them, you can't use your player character until the very, very, very, very last one, which you only unlock when you beat all the others. Oh well, still a fun game! …I just miss my player character.**

**Anyways, enough about Pokemon Conquest! Yeah, this is the last chapter! Thank you all for reading and staying with me this whole time, it's helped a lot! I mean it.**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Chapter Thirty-Eight: Final Challenge_

When Mion next opened her eyes, she found herself right outside of the school building, approximately a little while after lunch. She quickly dashed to the side and hid underneath the windowsill, and when a few seconds had passed by, she peeped in to take a look. It was just a few minutes after lunch had ended, it seemed, and Mion wondered what she would do when school got out and there was suddenly three of her again, though she figured it would be possible to avoid it this time. From the position of everyone in the classroom, Mion could tell that this was a scene from several weeks ago, from before Satoko became close to them.

Everyone was in their usual seats, except for the fact that there was no Rena. Satoko was seated far away from the group and refusing help and talk as she usually did before Mion changed her. She figured that since it was something she had to undo, it was before she had fully made up her mind to change Satoko, when she was still trying to work things out.

She was pretty far back, it seemed.

She sighed to herself. Well, how was she going to change things from here to make sure that Satoko wouldn't change and join the group? She couldn't go up to herself and tell her not without bringing a very good reason why not to, which Mion lacked. Then, if she couldn't talk to her about that, then who did she talk to? Well, she could talk to Satoko and change her so that she definitely wouldn't go anywhere near the group, but… She was sure she wouldn't go anywhere near her before, wasn't she? Even so, Mion managed to draw her into the group with a little effort.

Well, what should she do, then? She supposed it was possible to make it so that Satoko would absolutely refuse to get anywhere near her, but… how would she even do that? Bother her some more? …No, that wouldn't get on her nerves if she just repeated the same thing over and over again. Hm. Mion scratched her had over and over again as she tried to work out her plan.

Well, one thing that she could do was _bully_ Satoko so that she wouldn't want to be close to her, but… that was hard. Mion gritted her teeth and looked at the ground. How could she possibly do such a thing after all that poor Satoko went through? Besides, she was already tough enough then, and she could take it. She was used to that sort of thing.

Something occurred to Mion at that moment. Back when she was teaching Satoko about the cards, she got quite into it because she gave Satoko a chance to win and told her nicely that it was possible she could win and have fun with them, but… What if she didn't? A grin formed on Mion's face as she realized just what she had to do…

She jumped up from her place and began scurrying down the paths of Hinamizawa. There was something back at home that she needed to grab…

Mion snuck into the Sonozaki Manor and then into her room, where she began looking about. She looked through drawers and cabinets until she finally came across what she was looking for. It was her deck of cards. She grinned as she looked at them, her plan gleaming in her mind.

With that, Mion went back out of the manor and back down to school. It had taken her quite a bit to get there and back, but it seemed like there was still some time until school ended, so Mion decided to kill some time by drawing patterns on the ground while planning out just what she was going to do in full detail in her head.

Mion waited for school to end, and when it did, she watched as the children exited the building in a rush, happy screams filling the air as they all departed for home. She watched as her sister and her left, then spotting Keiichi leaving. She made sure that both Shion and her other self were far away before she slipped inside the room, and then into the classroom, where Satoko, Satoshi, Rika, and a few other kids were packing up.

"What's up, Shion?" Satoshi said when he spotted her. "Did you forget something?"

Mion nodded. "Yeah, just a small something, that's all." Mion walked over to her locker and opened it, pretending to be busy with something that was thrown in there, while actually just wasting some time until Satoshi, Rika, and anyone else's attention was away from her. When she looked back over to make sure that they weren't looking, Mion closed the locker up and wandered over towards Satoko.

"Hello there," she greeted, looking down at the much smaller girl.

Satoko narrowed her eyes. "What do you want from me? If it's about coming to sit with you at lunch, I don't want to hear it."

Mion shook her head. "You seem like the type who would be good at card games. I happen to really like card games…"

Satoko looked puzzled. "So?" she said.

"You know how we're always going up to you, and your brother is always going up to you, and how everyone is always bothering you at lunch about coming to sit with us, and you always just really want to eat your food?" Mion asked, thinking back to the numerous occasions when this happened and when she had to watch Satoshi do such a thing. It happened just about every day, it seemed.

"Yeah, I know all right," growled Satoko. "What of it?"

"Well, let's make a deal. If you play a card game with me, and if you beat me, then I'll tell Satoshi to cut it out," she said with a grin, remembering a similar time when she said something like that to Satoko. She was going to do the same exact thing as before, just be a little more harsh about it, and then… Mion grinned to herself some more. It would hopefully work.

Satoko looked a little reluctant with a really bored look on her face, but she took a bit to consider what would happen if she were to win. She would finally be able to stop listening to everyone trying to tell her to join in with the group, and she would finally be able to eat her lunch in peace, which was something that she had been attempting to do for just about every single day now with no success.

"Fine," she grunted, "but only a quick game. I don't want to spend time with people like you… I don't need it! I could be doing something more productive."

Mion raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what "something more productive" in her mind could be, but she shrugged and moved on from it. "Sit over there," Mion ordered Satoko as she pointed to her desk. I'll shuffle the cards and we'll start.

Satoko grumbled and did as she was told. As Mion sat down across from her and began shuffling the deck of cards in her hand, Satoko impatiently tapped her fingers over and over again on top of the desk. She looked like she wanted to walk out of the room and leave and had her eyes glued to the doorway, but Mion just sighed and continued to shuffle the deck with extreme skill. When she was done, she placed the deck on the table, then looking towards Satoko with a grin on her face.

"It's a very simple game. I'll take five cards from the deck and you have to guess all five of them."

Satoko looked confused. "How the heck am I supposed to do that? ! Do I get any clues? There are thousands of different kinds of cards!"

No, there weren't really, but the odds of guessing all of them correctly just weren't high enough for Satoko to get much of a chance, but that was exactly the point. She had rigged a game like this before so that she had to come and sit with them, but with this, she could actually really frustrate the girl into not wanting to come close to her if she did it enough.

"You're just supposed to guess. Now guess from left to right," Mion said, holding out the backs of the cards.

Satoko grumbled as she stared at the cards. "Uh… Five of diamonds, six of spades, nine of hearts, three of hearts, and two of diamonds," she said, randomly picking the names of a few cards off of the top of her head, for there was no other way to play the game. There was no strategy involved in it aside from just pulling names from your head and hoping for the best, when there was practically no chance of being right. The match had been decided from the beginning.

Mion shook her head. "Nope! Not even close, though you did guess five of diamonds when it was really the four of diamonds," she said, grinning a little bit to frustrate the girl.

Satoko slammed her fist down on the table. "How was I supposed to know that? !" she cried out, "there's no way for me to win!"

"You just guess," Mion said as she shuffled the cards back into the deck. She pulled out five more cards and flipped the backs to Satoko, smiling. "Round two. Guess again!"

Satoko narrowed her eyes. "Six of spades, nine of clubs, two of hearts, three of diamonds, five of hearts," she growled through her gritted teeth. Mion could sense the fire beginning to ignite in her eyes as she grew angrier and more frustrated by the second. This game was rigged so that she would have to put up with their bothering! Could she never get any peace?

Mion grinned. "Nope! I did have a six of spades, but it was the fourth card, not the first. You had to guess in order." She smiled as sickeningly sweetly as she possibly could so to anger Satoko even further.

Satoko practically growled at Mion with pure anger. "That's not fair!" she shouted, "I should at least get some credit for guessing one of them!"

Mion shook her head. "You have to guess them all right in order," she informed Satoko as she shuffled the cards back into the deck, looking away from the look of pure rage that flashed across Satoko's face as she spoke those words. She drew five cards again from the deck, making sure that Satoko couldn't see them one bit. "Okay, so this is the last round. Guess the five cards!"

The yellow-haired girl was practically on fire now, but she continued anyways. "Fine! One of diamonds, six of clubs, nine of hearts, two of spades, ace of spades!" she shouted out.

Mion shook her head. "Unfortunately, you didn't get any of them correct! Ahaha, not even close!" She slipped the cards back into the deck, then trying to grin the nicest grin she could manage at Satoko. "You really aren't very good at this game at all, are you? I guess that means that everyone is going to continue bothering you, then. That's just too bad! I suppose that if you had been better at this game, it would have been all over for those days, but you let the opportunity slip away from you. And don't blame me, I was nice enough to give it to you in the first place."

"But you rigged it so I couldn't win! Let's play Old Maid or something, then I have somewhat of a chance!" Satoko yelled.

"I don't play Old Maid," Mion replied.

Satoko frowned. "Whatever! I know, if you don't play Old Maid, how about YOU try to guess them now? Exact cards, all in order!" snapped the young girl as she reached for the deck, pulling it towards her almost greedily.

Mion smiled at the challenge. "Sounds like fun! How about if I make up for it and if I can't guess, I'll stop bothering you even though you did so poorly on the other rounds."

"Deal," growled the younger girl as she drew five cards, facing them towards her and making sure that Mion couldn't see them at all so that she had no way of cheating. Unfortunately, what Satoko didn't know that Mion very much had a way of cheating. The cards that Mion had brought with her to school were torn up and beaten, and some of them even had fold marks and stains from snacks and spills. She had memorized every single last card in that deck, and it was very possible for her to tell what a card was just by looking at the back of them, as if she was seeing right through them.

It became obvious to her what the cards Satoko had dealt with. She smiled. "From right to left, then! Two of hearts, nine of spades, three of clubs, ten of diamonds, and king of hearts!" cried Mion, reading the cards simply from the scratches.

Satoko frowned as she looked at the cards in her hand once, then twice over, and a third time when she heard what Mion had said. "What the heck!" screeched Satoko as her face turned a boiling red. "You cheated! You saw my cards!"

Mion shook her head. "Nope, I didn't see a thing. You were practically holding them to your face, so how could I have seen them?" she objected.

Satoko frowned yet again. "Then what did you do?"

Mion shrugged. "I guessed. That's what you're supposed to do."

Frustrated, the younger girl shuffled the cards back into the deck and pulled out five new cards, holding them to her face so she knew for sure that Mion wasn't looking at them. Mion didn't have to take more than a second to identify the cards that were held in front of her.

"Hm, okay! From right to left: Queen of diamonds, three of clubs, ten of diamonds, four of clubs, and ace of clubs!" Mion cried out.

Satoko's mouth gaped wide open when she looked at the cards before her, and then she shook her head as frustration and rage grew across her face. "How did you guess them? You have to be cheating!"

"I'm not cheating, I'm just guessing! I said, that's what you're supposed to do!" Mion yelled back.

"Then why do you keep getting it right?" questioned Satoko.

Mion smiled, yet again trying to make it as sweet as possible. "I'm just good at this game."

"How can you be good at guessing? It's just a random guess!" snapped Satoko.

Mion shrugged. "I'm just good at it. You're not. And I think that this concludes our game. Too bad!" She collected the deck from the table and stuffed it back into her container, smiling at Satoko. "That was fun, though! Nice try, even though you're horrible at the game."

The younger girl did not seemed pleased at all. She shot up from her seat with a scowl on her face. "That wasn't fair at all! You cheated, I swear you did!" she shouted out loud. "Just leave me alone!"

Mion turned around, trying to put on the most annoyed face she could. "Well, I don't really want to play with you either if this is how you're going to act. You're weak at the game, just admit it. I'm better than you, clearly." She scoffed at the younger girl. "You know, I don't really want to be around you either. You're kind of of a sore loser, and I happen _to _hate bratty sore losers like you. I think we've come to an agreement, haven't we?"

Satoko nodded firmly, growling at Mion. "Yeah, I think we have. Never come near me again, and I leave you and your stupid friends alone."

"It's a deal. Feel free to shut up about being better than everyone, too, because you're clearly not if you can't beat me at an easy game." Mion felt really bad on the inside for all the bad things she was saying, but she told herself that that Satoko wasn't the real Satoko, that if she said these horrible things to her, she could come home to the real Satoko, who would probably also grow frustrated at such a prank, but then smile and laugh when she realized what Mion had pulled on her. Besides, it would be Satoko and not her pulling the prank, wouldn't it?

"What did you just say?" shouted Satoko with such intensity in her voice that she would have never expected it from someone as young as her.

Mion just smirked and turned around. "Nothing." There was no point in provoking her further. She felt bad enough, and the job here was already done. She spun around and walked out the door without another word, and when she was in the hallway, she smiled to herself.

"Take me to the next part, Hanyuu," she whispered.

And with a flash, she was off. However, as she disappeared, a twisting, lurching feeling in her heart twirled around inside her and seemed to stab at it… She knew exactly what she had to do next, and it wasn't one bit pretty or easy for her to do.

_~~~~X~~~~_

When the light cleared, Mion found herself outside the building, just after school had ended. She didn't know exactly what day it was, but that didn't matter, and she figured that she would find out eventually. She hid against a wall outside the schoolhouse and watched as kids exited the building, chatting to themselves.

Suddenly, both her other self and her sister walked out of the building, chatting with each other.

"Wow, Shion," Shion said, "it's your first day and you're already fitting right in!"

The other Mion grinned. "Haha, of course! I love it here already!"

Mion smiled and nodded, confirming the date. It was just after the first day of school, and she knew exactly why Hanyuu had brought her to this date and just what she needed to do. Unfortunately for her, this part wasn't going to be very easy. Heck, it would be even harder for her to do it than preventing Shion from murdering Satoko and her other self! That one involved careful planning and skill. This one was just hard for her to do, because on the inside, it hurt her.

Mion gulped as she saw Keiichi walk out of the door, and the words of just what she needed to do echoed inside of her. _"Make it so that Keiichi never falls in love with you." _How could she do such a thing? She had to make him hate her… but… how could she make him hate her? Even though they had been through so much, and even after that whole thing with Rena, Mion still loved him. He was _Keiichi._ She had been so happy having him as a boyfriend, and now, she had to undo all that… all her happiness in that world turned to ash, yet again.

Keiichi turned around and spotted Mion. "Ah, Shion! What are you doing?" he asked, striding up to her. "Didn't you go home?" There was a grin on his face that startled Mion and made her heart ache, throbbing in her chest. She knew that she would have to make that sweet, friendly smile of him turn into a hateful scowl, but she wasn't sure if she could. "Ah, oh well. I suppose you wanted to stick around for a bit, huh?"

Mion just nodded, having no idea what to say or what to do. Well, she did know what she was going to do, but perhaps she just wasn't letting herself say anything.

"I'm glad you're fitting in so well. One day, and we're already good friends, aren't we?" Keiichi said with a huge grin on his face. "I was surprised at how nice people were here, too! Haha, you'll get along perfectly!"

Mion opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn't let the words flow out. She clamped her jaws shut and stood there, completely silent as she stared at the ground. Her heart was beating fast and twisting knots in her stomach, which was causing something to block the words she knew she had to say from being spoken. Her hands twisted into tight fists as she tried to control her emotions. She couldn't fail. She had to do this.

Keiichi may be her boyfriend here, and maybe she had to destroy their relationship. But… it would all go back to normal, wouldn't it? Then, maybe the real Keiichi would love her… back at _home._

"Hey, Shion, is something wrong?" Keiichi asked, blinking at the girl with a concerned look on his face.

Mion gritted her teeth together as she tried to force words out of her throat, but they refused to come out. Her mind flashed to the many happy memories they had had together. Of him holding her, of them confessing their feelings for each other, of them going on a rather awkward date at Angel Mort… In a moment, she would have to turn that all to nothing. She had loved it so much, but… She forced her mind to flash to the memories of her beating him up and murdering him, reminding herself that those times with Keiichi were already long gone.

Nothing would change with the words that she spoke. Yet, it was still killing her on the inside to know what she had to do.

Mion clenched her fists even tighter, and with a final reminder that she had to go on, she managed to push herself to speak.

"Please, just leave me alone," growled Mion.

Keiichi looked taken aback. "Shion, really, is there something wrong? If you're upset, I don't want to leave you alone—"

"—Leave me alone!" Mion snapped, this time with rage filling her eyes and staring right into Keiichi's soul, burning it up with the sheer intensity of her anger. "Like hell I really care about all this crap! I was happier at home. I don't want you to be near me, got it?" she growled at him.

It was killing her to say this. No… no… she wanted him as a friend. She wanted him as _more_ than a friend. But she couldn't say it. Not now. She had to go on and spit out hateful words that weren't true at the boy, because otherwise, she would never have a shot at it again…

Keiichi was stunned by these words. "H-Huh?" he stuttered out.

"Y-You heard me!" Mion yelled, trying not to let the hurt show in her voice. "I don't like people. I don't want to be anywhere near you or your stupid friends!" she hissed. She took a few steps forward and reached towards Keiichi's collar, tugging it upwards as if to threaten him. "So don't you come a step near me again. Got it?" She stared right into his eyes with her own, which she tried her hardest to fill with anger and hatred, but on the inside, she wondered if Keiichi could see how pained she was.

The slightly younger boy struggled out of Mion's grip and stumbled back, his eyes wide with shock and hurt. It killed Mion on the inside to see that, but there was nothing she could do. _Come on, Sonozaki Mion. If do this, you can go home. The rest… it the rest is easy, isn't it? _She gritted her teeth and with that, she nodded to herself. "I know I was acting all nice and stuff today, but hell, Onee just wanted to see me being happy and that crap." She stepped up closer to Keiichi, who seemed to reflexively inch away. "I don't need you, and I don't want you."

"S-Shion!" cried Keiichi. "I don't get it… you were so happy before."

"I'm just a good actor," Mion huffed. "Now get out of my face and don't speak a word to me ever again, or else." She reached for the boy, grabbing him roughly and jamming her elbow into his stomach, causing him to gasp out with pain. "That is just an example. I was taught martial arts, you know." She released him from the grip and smirked at him, though on the inside, she was crying out an apology. "This is the last time you talk to me. Got it?"

Keiichi slowly nodded his head and looked over his shoulder, where Rika was exiting the building. He scurried away towards her and didn't even bother to say goodbye, but he did look over his shoulder with a look of horror plastered across his face.

Mion felt tears forming in her eyes at the look of horror. _I'm sorry, Kei-chan. I'm so sorry… I love you… but we can be together in the real world. _This ended everything they ever had together in this world. The looks of love, their kisses… all of it was now nothing. It had officially never happened. She whirled around and walked away before anyone could see that she was starting to cry for no reason, telling herself she had to move on. The hard part was over. If only she could take that knife that kept stabbing and tearing at her wound away from her heart. It should already stop… what she needed to do was now over.

_"Mion, it's okay. He'll be with you as soon as you're home," _Hanyuu told her gently.

Mion nodded. "I know…" she said, her voice cracking with pain, "but… it's just so hard…"

_"It's okay, Mion, it's okay… just one more scene… just one more, and then all you have to do is jump off that cliff and return home…"_

That was all she needed to do, huh? All she needed to do… The next scene was to prevent her from transferring, and that was really easy. She just had to exclaim that she didn't want to transfer to Shion, and that was it. It would be over.

…But, what about Rion…?

_~~~~X~~~~_

The flash of light that soon occurred took her back to her room in her apartment in Okinomiya. How long had it been since she moved out of there? It had been a few months, hadn't it? A few months… that was all it took for Rion to manipulate her into making the perfect world, and it took even less than that for it to all fall apart.

Mion gritted her teeth as she walked to the dinning room, trying to control her tears. What just happened wasn't going to stay real. It would all get locked away along with Rion in this world as soon as she jumped off the cliff, and then she could greet her friends again. Not the murderous Shion, not the rude Satoko, not the overly cheerful Rika… They would be right. Everything would be right. And she would be Mion again.

She sat down on the chair and waited for a bit. She knew this was the day Shion took her in to talk to Oryou about transferring, so all she had to do was say no. That was all she had to do. The rest was easy, wasn't it? She just had to jump, and then it would be over…

The knock on the door that followed brought Mion away from her thoughts as she jolted up and approached the door, then unlocking it and allowing the girl in without even bothering to ask who it was. She didn't even need to.

"Hi, Shion!" greeted Shion. "It's good to see you again! I got your letter. I'm sorry I haven't visited in such a long time. Batcha's been a little… well…"

Mion nodded. "I know how she is. It's fine."

"Anyways, I came here because of your letter. I don't know if we can convince her, but I would love it if you came and transferred! It would be so great!" Shion grinned at her sister, pure joy in her eyes. "You know how Batcha is, but with a little convincing, I'm sure—"

"—I actually changed my mind, Onee. I'm not going to transfer," Mion informed her, cutting her right off.

The joy in Shion's eyes instantly died away and was replaced by confusion. "Huh?"

"Yeah, it's better here, and I really don't want to be near Batcha. I know she's really nice and all, but… I can't take it there. I'm Sonozaki Shion. It's too hard," Mion said, looking off into the distance as she hoped her act was convincing.

Shion sighed. "I know, Shion… I know how it is for you. But perhaps if you stayed with her, she would warm up a bit."

Mion shook her head. "No, I've already made my choice." She grinned sadly at her sister and somewhat apologetically. "I don't want to break again, Onee."

It seemed that Shion instantly understood, and she just nodded. "I understand. I don't want you to break, either. It… it was just so horrible." She lunged forward and pulled her sister into a tight embrace, holding onto her tightly. Mion smiled just a little bit, and she glad to have some form of comfort with her, but a part of her reminded her that she wasn't the real Shion, that her affection wasn't the affection that she wanted… She liked her sister's affection, not this fake Shion's…

They pulled away from the embrace, and Shion just nodded. "I'll visit, okay? I will make sure I can. Batcha can't take that away from me."

Mion nodded in response, grinning a sweet grin. "I'll see you soon, then?"

"How about if I stay here now? I'll even pick something up at the store right now for us or something," Shion said, probably thinking of take out from Angel Mort or smoething similar to that. "I think it would be nice, wouldn't it?"

Mion smiled. "Sure, go ahead!"

"I'll be right back, then!" cried Shion as she turned out of the door, closing it behind her.

Mion smiled to herself. It was all over now. All the changes that had to be made were made, and all there was to do now was die.

…Die. Mion gulped, but shook her head after. She wouldn't really die. It was just temporary. And after that, she would be beside her friends.

_~~~~X~~~~_

Mion soon appeared in the mountains of Hinamizawa. The moonlight was shining down on her through the blanket of darkness covering up the sky, and reflecting the many trees with a beautiful glow. Mion took a deep breath as she recognized the place as the same place she had fallen off of… the same accident that had started it all. She would just have to do what started this tragedy. It would start and finish in the same way.

As she walked forward, she though to herself. The real her of this world was depressed and broken before she came here, wasn't she? Yes… she was just like how she was days ago… At that moment, the true impact of what Rion had done had hit her. She reduced her back to her horrible, depressed state in a matter of months. She had turned how it began into how it ended, and right here and now, it would also end how it begun. With her and the cliff, falling off of it… committing suicide, essentially.

_"That was her goal. Take the old you and make you her. A horribly depressed, psychotic girl…" _Hanyuu seemed to whisper in her head.

Psychotic? She was depressed, but she certainly wasn't psychotic, wasn't she? The one before her, that was. She was definitely psychotic at the end there, but she doubted that the old her was in the beginning.

_"I guess you never figured it out, did you? Your uncle's murder. That was by your own hand, Mion. Or rather, by the old you's hand. Horribly depressed and done with the horrible things that the Sonozaki family was putting you through, you decided to get rid of the one who was pulling the strings of your misery before you killed yourself. So, on that day, you took a knife, and you… you…" _Hanyuu couldn't spit out the last words, and Mion found herself not wanting her to. She understood just well.

She killed him, huh? …All this time… ha… wasn't the answer obvious in the beginning? She was the only one that would, and the only one that wanted to…

She shook her head and gritted her teeth. That wasn't her. That was her old self, the her of this world. Yet, Mion was dumbstruck about just how Rion could turn Mion into the old Mion of her world in a matter of months. She made her the depressed, psychotic girl that was the her of this world, and it barely took her anymore effort than whispering things into other people's ears.

Mion trudged onwards, towards the cliff. As she did, she continued to think about Rion, and just what she had done to her. Reduced her to such a horrible state… and all this time, she thought she was her friend. She betrayed her, and she had never seen it coming. She was so stupid. How did she not figure it out? Of course Rena had said that she heard Oyashiro and saw him standing over her bed in her world, which forced her to transfer. Satoshi said the same thing… and yet, she connected that the two events that took place had to be similar to the events in her world. …Mion gritted her teeth. This all could have been avoided if she had just figured it out earlier.

At least Rion was defeated now. She had undone all the events, and now, all there was to do was jump…

Her eyes fell on the cliff side, recognizing it instantly. This was the place that both she had fallen off of and the her of this world jumped off of. It would end the same way it began for both of them. Her she was, falling down the same cliff, committing suicide, just like the her of this world…

She stepped on the edge and breathed heavily. It would all be over… she just had to jump.

As she took a step forward, she felt a hand on her shoulder, jerking her backwards. She gasped out in shock as whoever it was that had grabbed her roughly pulled backwards on her, gripping her tightly, their arms firmly and strongly holding her back from her final step. She felt horribly sharp fingernails digging into her arm, and at that moment, Mion knew exactly who it was.

"Rion!" she shouted.

Rion smirked. "You seriously thought I could get away? And Hanyuu knew I would come the whole time, too!" she laughed out loud. "There's no way in hell I'm letting you go now, toy! Playtime isn't over for me yet. We were just getting to the best part!"

Mion struggled about, but she couldn't find the strength to pull away from the god's grip.

"Awww, don't struggle now! You're wasting your strength. You're gonna need it when you find out what kind of fun, fun, fun game I'm gonna play with you in the next world," she said, her voice reeking with sadism. She stared to laugh loudly at the thought, and she could barely control it. It seemed to echo across the whole mountain, screeching into Mion's ears, filling her with shivering fear. She could barely move. That laugher was like a blizzard, freezing her right to the ground in pure, icy fear that nibbled at her, numbing her, biting at her… "Hahahaha! It's not over, it's not over! No… I won't let it be over!"

Rion buried her claws deep into Mion, and then she looked down at her with her yellow eyes, which seemed to glow with sadism in the shining light of the moon. "You're coming with me, now! I've got fun plans for us!"

Light began to form before Mion's eyes, and she screeched out with fear when she realized what was happening before her. She struggled more and more, but it was futile. Rion was too strong. No… no! She was so close! What was all that for, then? What did she scream at Keiichi for, then? She couldn't go back to another world like that old one. No… she didn't want to suffer again! Her whole body trembled and seemed to scream out at that thought, with sharp claws ripping gashes in her. Pain and panic flooded through her and washed over her like the tide of the raging sea, and she did everything not to scream.

Right as the light was about to fill her vision, she felt the abnormally sharp fingernails buried into her skin suddenly disappear, and the tight grip around her disappeared. She whipped around and saw Rion on the floor, gasping out as Hanyuu stood above her, her palm outstretched with light emitting from it. It swirled around into a gigantic orb and suddenly released, striking the evil god again and forcing her to yell out.

"Rion, this is as far as you will go! You're not taking her!" Hanyuu yelled out, forming another ball of light in her palm. "You may have taken away some of my powers, but never was it perfect! You could never take them all!"

But, much to Mion's surprise, all Rion did was laugh mockingly. "Ha! You're overestimating yourself, Hanyuu! Your powers… are already gone… Ahaha!" Hanyuu looked a bit confused at first, but in a flash with the flick of Rion's wrist, the purple-haired goddess disappeared. Rion stood up to her feet, brushing her bright red kimono off.

"Now, where were we? Oh yes…" Rion grinned cruelly. "I was just gonna take you to the fun, fun world… We'll have a lot of fun together, you and I!"

But this time, Mion saw her move coming. She was _not _going back to that world, and that was final! The only world that she would be going to was her own! She dodged Rion as she tried to grasp for her, and quickly turned around and punched the goddess in the back. She had no idea what it would do, but it was worth a shot. However, as Mion saw the unfazed look on Rion's face and the smirk, she knew that her punches would do nothing against the goddess.

"How funny! But your human strength can't save you." Rion raised her hands up, a dark black flow beginning to form around her hands. "You're coming with me!"

"No!" shouted Mion. "I'm not! I'm not going back to that world, Rion! I refuse!" There was no way she would. She would rather die than go back there! "You can't make it happen! We already foiled your plan!"

Rion gritted her teeth. "Oh yeah, well… take this!" Rion lunged forward to grab, but Mion ducked right under her hand and slid behind her. Growling, Rion turned around and tried again, but Mion was quick and she knew just what was coming. She jumped backwards and out of the god's grasp, grinning as the god's sharp fingernails just failed to graze her. There was nothing she could do but dodge right now, but as long as it was keeping her from going to that world, then…

"Give it up! You can't do anything to stop me!" yelled Rion, laughing madly. "You're just a weak human! You can't even scratch me!"

Mion growled. She knew that she couldn't, but as long as she could dodge, she could still win. She was too fast, and Rion's moves were just too predictable. There was nothing she was going to do but grab for her, for she didn't want to hurt Mion and kill her, therefore spoiling her fun, so Mion knew exactly what she needed to do every time.

Once again, Rion tried to grab. She slid underneath her hand and down to the ground, escaping the grasp by a long distance. The goddess tried to kick her off the ground, and as soon as Mion sensed this, she rolled forward and out of the way of her hands. She quickly stood up and stood firmly in front of Rion, staring right into the stunned goddess's eyes with determination in hers.

Rion was not going to have her fun, and she was not going to take her back to another twisted, screwed up world where she could watch her friends die. There was no question about it. Rion had no power over her soul anymore! She knew who the goddess was now, and she knew that she couldn't fall for her schemes again. Images of her world flashed into her mind. Of her charming and always hilarious Keiichi, of her sly and smart Satoko standing with another trap of her kind Rena always willing to cheer her up when there was a problem, of her sweet sister who would always hold her during rough times, of her cute yet dark Rika who could always have fun with everyone and make the whole club smile… She was going back there to them, and there was nothing that could stop her, even the power of gods!

That's when she spotted it. Rion could fight all she wanted, but she could end this now. She whipped around and ran straight towards the edge of the cliff, and she could sense the alarm Rion had when she cried out behind her, realizing just what Mion was going to do. She could feel Hanyuu's form right beside her, running with her to take her home as soon as she hit that floor, far away from Rion's grasp. As she ran towards the cliff, all she could think about was how far she had come.

She had came to this world and discovered what it was like to be Shion, and not the Mion she rightfully was. She had turned a jerky Satoko into the trickster Satoko everyone knew so well. She had gotten Keiichi to fall in love with her, and the two of them shared so many happy times. She had made great friends with everyone and played so many games, and they had such good times… but that was all over. She thought of Satoko's depression, of Satoshi's sudden love confession, of her sister's rage, of Satoko hanging dead from her restraints, of her sister with a knife through her heart, of Keiichi and Rena lying dead on the ground with shock and confusion in their eyes.

It would all end here. With this, it was all gone. There was no power in the world that could draw her away now.

It was amazing how Rion could play with her mind, but that was not within Rion's power anymore. She could have all the power in the world now, but she couldn't have control over her kind. She had fallen for her tricks once, and she couldn't fall for them again. It was already over.

And now, as she ran towards the cliff that would take her back home, the goddess who held all the power in the world was reduced to that small, nine-year-old child that could do nothing but follow her and project images. In that moment, Rion was now truly a powerless god.

Mion couldn't help but halt as she came to the side of the cliff. She looked down at the drop. It was so far… could she really jump? What if she died? So many worries filled her mind at that moment, and she could barely control them as they cluttered up her brain. Yet, when she turned around and looked at Rion desperately trying to lung for her with an emotion she knew was defeat on her face, she knew she had to. Even if she did die, it was better than being in the grasp of that evil goddess.

The thought of home filled her mind, of the many people who were awaiting her… and at that moment, she realized that she couldn't wait a moment longer for them.

With a deep breath and whisper of "I'm coming home, guys…" Mion turned around and jumped. She flew through the air, feeling it against her body as it slowly approached the ground…

The last thing she heard was Rion crying out with defeat before the world turned black.

With that, the darkest evil that had been lurking around Hinamizawa and cursing it for hundreds of years was finally defeated. No more would she taunt the citizens of Hinamizawa, bringing them to pain and torture.

Hinamizawa was freed from its curse, and so was Mion.

She was home.

_End._

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Well, there it goes! Still the epilogue with her at home, of course, as the story would NOT be complete without it, but there you have it! WAN, almost in it's entirety. I will say parting words when I upload the epilogue because I cannot call it complete without it, but for now, I will ask this. I haven't asked for reviews mostly this whole story because I find it rude, but now, I would love a review. All of you who have been reading this without a word, all of you that have been reviewing constantly… I would love to hear from you. Tell me what you think! I'll ask for a full story review next chapter, but please, not now. I want to hear about the ending from you guys! I asked for a full story review on the last chapter of GED rather than the ending, and no one said a word about how they thought it concluded and stuff, so I would love to avoid that : P. I wanted to hear about that…**

**One last thing. Uryuu-Nipaa asked what would happen to GED after I posted EOG. Okay, so it's staying up. I'm not deleting GED. Why? GED may be very similar during Part One, but Parts 2-4 are completely new content, and to finish it off, part one has one significant change that will effect everything in Part one and make it very different. So, I want to keep GED up. Can't wait to write EOG, by the way! Hopefully, all you HG fans will read TB, too. I probably will do them both at the same time and write one chapter of one whenever I feel like it, depending on my mood. It works better. I practice wrote the first two chapter of TB already (!) because I was in the mood to write it over WAN, so it should work out nicely.**

**Thank you all! I will have the epilogue up soon. And, because I forgot to say it before, happy late Watanagashi, and one year anniversary to GED!**

**Hopefully I can upload this. My internet shut down for several hours and it just came back up. Ugh. *kicks it***

**~Crimso**


	40. Epilogue

**Crimso's Notes V.2**

**I wish I had more time to write this epilogue, I really do… but I don't have much time. I would have wrote it in the car if I weren't asleep half the time and then the other half, my little sister insisted on me reading a fanfiction I had opened out loud to her, which was kind of fun. Ahaha. I have to wake up early because it's my last night before camp… I'm already at the hotel ready to go to the camp early tomorrow, and then I'm gone.**

**Enough is enough! Enjoy the epilogue**

_~~~~X~~~~_

_Epilogue_

Mion never thought that she would find the dizziness of the head after waking up from a long nap or from being knocked out, but moments after she recovered from the initial dizziness did she tell herself that it was one of the most wonderful things in the world after all that she had been through. It only took her seconds to realize just where she was, and just what had happened. The white of the room and the familiar surroundings could only belong to the hospital that she had woken up in when she first arrived to the other world, but this time, Mion knew better. She was not in that same hospital, because this one was in her world.

She smiled to herself as she thought about Rion, and how she had been defeated for good now. She had, hadn't she? She shouldn't worry about her anymore. She sighed and lay back on the bed, telling herself that she really didn't have to worry. Yes, it was all better now… She didn't quite remember how it all ended, and all she could really come up with was feeling the air as she sprinted forward, and then the feeling as her body slammed against the ground…

She gritted her teeth together. That wasn't a pleasant memory…

It was only seconds later that a doctor walked into the room, seeing the state that Mion was in with a surprised look flashing across his face. "You're awake!" he cried out. He ran over to the bed and leaned over Mion, checking up on her body. That was when she was overloaded with questions. "When did you wake up? Do you feel okay? Do you remember what happened? Does anything hurt?"

Mion felt her head hurt with the amount of questions, as she was still trying to process a lot of things in her head herself. She shook her head quickly, not sure of what else to do, even though that really didn't answer the "when did you wake up question" and the answer would contradict the fourth and second questions. The doctor seemed to be very confused by this response, so she decided it would be okay if she elaborated a bit. "I woke up a second ago and I feel all right. I guess I'll remember it all in a few seconds…"

The doctor nodded. "You fell off the cliff in the mountains when you were paying tag. It was close and you would have died if your friends didn't get you over here right away… we had to operate quite a bit, but you made it. Only just." The doctor manages a small smile. "You're a strong girl, aren't you? Surviving all that…"

Mion put a shadow of a smile on her face, but she could do no more than that. She was a strong girl, huh? After all of what she had been through, she wondered if that was true. She broke underneath the pressure of all that was going on around her, but at least she had to will to live after all that… or had she lost that, but had continued to live on anyways? It was more likely that was the truth. After all, at many points, she had accepted her inevitable death only for it not to come.

"Your parents are worried sick and so are your friends. I'll call them and they should be here in no time. For now, just take it easy, and it's okay if you can't completely remember what happened just moments before the accident. It's better not to have those memories sometimes." The doctor nodded to her one last time before walking out the door to inform everyone of her awakening and to call up her family and friends.

Mion smiled at the thought of them. Her family and her friends. Her real family, and her REAL friends, if she were to be exact. No longer would she have to put up with the rude Satoko or the depressed Rika, but she would be able to see the friends she had made so long ago, and the ones she had become so close to. Just the very thought made her smile even larger as she closed her eyes, trying to relax as much as she could. The pleasant idea of her friends was filling her head, and as she did that, she tried to block out the horrifying events that had happened in the last few days. All that she wanted to remember was that it was terrible and that she was glad to be back and nothing more than that. She did not want to recall the murderous events… no, it was just enough to know that they happened and not try to think about the details of such events.

She felt her whole body tremble as she recalled Satoko's bloody, dead body hanging from its restraints—No! She could not think about such a thing. It was too horrible and it made her stomach churn, and a rush of horror ran to her brain. It twisted her insides and her mind, and for a moment, she felt just like she was in the last moments of that world before she met Hanyuu and Rika: completely insane. Like she would run a knife through the head of the next person she saw… In fact, she was very lucky that there were no sharp objects being kept next to her hospital bed.

_Relax, _a voice in her head ordered her. She could not listen until she filled her heads with thoughts of the club and her friends, who she would soon seem. They chased the insanity away with a rush, all bad thoughts fleeing her head faster than a mouse scampering away from a hungry cat. She didn't have to recall that again… she didn't…

She felt like she was on the edge of breaking for a second. Why was she flickering between bad and good thoughts? One moment, it was Shion laughing and smiling at her with such love that Mion dearly missed, and the next, it was that same girl holding a knife to her throat with insanity gleaming within her green eyes, laughing manically. _I shouldn't be having these thoughts. Mion… you're safe now. You're safe now, you're safe now, you're safe now, you're safe now, you're safe now… _

Fifty thought were trying to work their way into her brain at once, beginning to pound against Mion's head. The most prominent one of them, and the one that seemed to be the most powerful as it easily clawed down the rest, was the thought of regret. How foolish could she be to think that that world was better? It wasn't. There she was missing Rena for one, and here, there was a possibility of Satoshi coming back, where there, Rena's transfer probably would have never happened if it weren't for Rion's intervention. That was something that was worse. She also was missing her name and role as the heiress, which she didn't consider to be so bad in the moment because she was happy if her sister was happy, but… Was her sister even happy with that role? Neither of them wanted to bear the burden of being the head of the family, so she was technically just making it worse for the both of them.

She had to order herself to stop there, for it was not her decision that corrupted the world, but Rion. If Rion hadn't done her horrible deeds, she would have nothing to be blamed of. She tried to convince herself of this, but found it was harder than she thought. Her head was in a jumble from transferring world again, and she wondered why she hadn't been expecting it…

It must have been a long time that passed by, for her friends were before her in a blink of an eye. They seemed to scramble down the hallways despite yells from doctors outside that they shouldn't disturb the sleeping injured, but Mion figured they just weren't thinking at that moment and would be kind enough otherwise. And as they stood before her, for a moment, she wanted to jump backwards. She gazed over each and every one of them. Shion was smiling at her sister, tears forming in her eyes, and it seemed to be just the same for everyone else, expect for Rika who was just smiling and nodding knowingly at Mion. Seconds later, Satoko dashed into Mion's arms and starting bawling her eyes out as she rammed her head into her shoulder. She had been half expecting that smile of her sisters to be full of sadistic intent and a knife to go flying at her head, but when she realized that her sister was happy to see her, she questioned why she would ever think that. Perhaps the other world had done more damage than she thought it would. Scars were forever, after all, and that other world was certainly a scar.

"Mion-san, Mion-san!" cried Satoko's muffled voice, "I thought you were dead!"

Mion could only smile weakly at the young girl. This was certainly the Satoko she knew. "I'm not dead. Did you really think that this old man could die from a little fall?" she did her best to let out a chuckle, but she knew her joke wasn't funny. She had died, after all, and if it weren't for Hanyuu, it would be her dead body that her friends would be looking upon now.

"Mi-chan, we were all worried," Rena started. "Keiichi couldn't stop sobbing after it happened, and kept repeating over and over aagain that it was all his fault… I had to drag him away from you and out of the hospital room while sternly telling him that his presence would be of no help to the doctors when they worked on you…" She glanced over to the brown-haired boy, who had the faintest of a blush on his face. "But I think that otherwise, Mi-chan, it was good to have him beside you. Though you were out for so long, you seemed a little stronger whenever he was by your side."

Mion couldn't help but blush a bit. That made some sense…

Shion found herself grinning at her sister. "I visited you every day, and I had to drag along this guy—" She jerked her thumb at Keiichi "—before I could go anywhere, though I suppose 'dragged' isn't the most fitting word. It was more like I informed him and he jumped out of his seat and ran beside me to you."

Keiichi grinned a bit, but then washed that off. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry… I should have explained so that you would stop running… I shouldn't have led you towards that cliff. I-…" He jerked his head away as tears began to fill up his eyes and roll down his cheeks, his hands twisting into tight fists. "—I could have done so many things to save you, but I didn't…"

Mion did not like the sight of Keiichi blaming himself over all of this. After all, the fault should be on her, not him. She should have listened. "Don't, Kei-chan. It's not you." She hated to see him hurt. Though the other world had done many things to her state of mind, it did not change the fact that she cared for him and she would not have him say such ridiculous things. "And even if it was, I would forgive you."

Keiichi shook his head, tears cascading down at a faster rate. "No, it _was _my fault. You don't understand how horrible I felt, Mion. I spent every single day regretting it; every moment of those days regretting it… it was _awful._"

Regret. It was a word Mion came to know so well in her world, for hers was one without regret. It was the lack of it that changed everything. Her name, Shion's name, Satoko's personality, Rika's personality, Rena's disappearance, Satoshi's appearance… everything in that world that was different was because of it. Regret was something that everyone felt in their hearts. And, at that moment, Mion wondered. Keiichi's biggest regret was a mystery for the gun incident happened. But, as he spoke, Mion wondered… Perhaps, at that last moment before she hit the ground, his biggest regret changed. It was that he couldn't save her, and because of that, she was alive in that world when her other self hit the floor. Rion herself said she didn't understand why her other self had lived, but as she realized this, it suddenly made much more sense.

"Keiichi," Rika said, tugging on the boy's pants. "Don't you worry, she's fine now… It's not your fault."

Keiichi looked very doubtful.

"Kei-chan… everyone. I just remembered something," she said, partially lying with the "just remembered" part, but that didn't matter. With that, she had everyone's focus in the room, though it wasn't like she didn't have it before. "When I was in that coma, I had a strange dream."

Shion blinked. "Strange dream?" she repeated.

Mion nodded. "Yeah, a strange dream. I was transported to this weird version of Hinamizawa that was just like this one, except no one had any regrets at all." She pointed towards Satoko. "For one, Satoko was a bit of a jerk because she didn't have the regret of pulling Satoshi down by not being able to care for herself."

Satoko looked down at her feet. "Yeah, I always regretted that…" she admitted with darkness in her voice that was usually unseen from her.

"Shion, you and I had switched places because of the whole tattoo incident…" Mion said, glancing to her sister with sorrow in her eyes as she recalled that awful event. Yet, now, as she stood in her own world after coming from one where that hadn't existed, it was hard to regret it.

Pain grew in Shion's eyes. "Onee-…"

Mion moved on before they could get too much into discussing that in front of their clueless friends, who were looking a bit confused over what the two of them were talking about. That was a story for another time. "And Rena, you weren't even there at all. Because of your parents, because your regret that forced them apart did not exist."

Rena only nodded. "Yes, that has been a regret in my heart for ages."

"And Rika, you were just a happy child with no darker side to you at all," Mion finished, looking towards the blue-haired girl who was probably already aware of that fact.

Rika nodded. "Yes, I was."

"Finally, Satoshi-kun was still there because of the regret with his aunt." She didn't want to go into further details, simply because she could already see the shock and somewhat pain-filled expressions on Satoko and Shion's face. It wasn't the easiest subject to discuss with either of them, that was for sure.

Mion took a deep breath and continued on. "And because of that, I thought that everything was perfect. It was a world without regrets, so how could it be tainted? But slowly, I realized something." She breathed as she forced herself to remember the darker parts of the world. "The world wasn't as perfect as it seemed. Things began to fall apart quickly, and soon enough, it was just me standing with four of you dead and one missing, and only one left to stand in front of me and force me to see the truth. Even though there was no regret, everything was so much worse." She clenched the top of her sheets. "But why? It doesn't make sense." That was something she never got, not even now. Regret was bad, wasn't it? So shouldn't getting rid of it make it better? Then why was the world so corrupted?

Shion was the first to speak. "Mion," she said, addressing her sister by her name and indicating that what she was about to say was very serious, "I always regretted that day, too. I know you didn't mean and it and neither did I, and though it turned our fates backwards, just look where it got us. Where would you be if you were me? Where would I be if I were you? I'm much happier as me than as you, and I think you can agree." Shion grinned a little bit, and this time, Mion knew that it was from the bottom of Shion's heart and not in any way hurt. "I learned that even though I may regret it, I shouldn't wish for it not to have happened, because even though that was a horrible incident, it lead us on the paths we are much more comfortable and happier on."

Mion was surprised by her sister's words, and for a moment, she understood. However, all thought was cut off when someone else in the world began to speak.

"Yes," replied Satoko. "I… I love my Nii-Nii and wish he was by my side, but he is going to come back. Where would I be if he never left? Probably clinging to his leg, that's for sure." She grinned in her sly sort of way, just like she would grin when she successfully pulled off a trap on someone or played an unexpected move in a game of cards. "I regret it, but I don't wish for it to have not happened, because I know that he will come back. It's not even a question! And when he comes back, he can look at me and smile. His Satoko is all grown up now and won't cry herself to sleep or sleep with a light on because she's scared of the dark! Ohohohohohoho!"

Shion looked down at the yellow-haired girl and grinned wildly at the thought. "And I can tell him that it was all my doing! He'll be proud of me, for sure…" A blush crept onto Shion's face as she thought about the boy who held her heart, even a year after his disappearance.

"Hey!" Satoko shouted back, turning around to look at the girl who had become like her older sister in the last months. "It wasn't all you! I do a lot on my own, you know!" For a moment, it seemed like she was going to pull a trap out of nowhere like a basin flying onto Shion's head, but she seemed to remember that she was talking to Shion and not to Keiichi, so nothing hit her.

Everyone laughed at the exchange, especially Mion. How long had it been since she laughed like that or seen an interaction so typically of the club yet so heartwarming? A long time, that was the answer, and she didn't want to dig deeper than that to find the full answer. That was enough for her.

"I think that I speak for both Keiichi-kun and I when I say that though I regret my past, if it hadn't happened, I would have never met you all!" Rena said, a troubled grin on her face as she was forced to recall painful memories. "And that wouldn't be any fun, would it? Besides, the kids back there weren't nearly as fun and not nearly as close to me as you guys! You mean much more to me than them." She looked over to Keiichi, nodding in his direction. "Right, Keiichi-kun?"

Keiichi nodded firmly. "Yeah!" he said. "I don't know where I would be without you guys! Probably stuck up in my old house studying a bunch of math crap! Ahaha!"

Mion grinned. Well, that certainly wouldn't be any fun, now would it? Anything but that would be better!

The next to speak up was Rika. "Mion, you may have heard of my long journey and how much I regret it, but in the end, I learned a lesson, just like you are now. I learned never to not believe in my friends and that they are always there for me no matter what. I should never distrust them, because they will always help me whenever I need it!" Rika grinned her sweet, cute grin that Mion missed oh so much. "And because of that, I can appreciate all of you and all the many games we play together! Nipah!"

At the sound of Rika's signature phrase, Rena practically went crazy and scooped her right up, twirling her around in a circle. "Hau! Rika-chan's so cute! I'm taking her home with me!"

Mion laughed at the distraught expression on Rika's face, which soon turned into a sigh and a shake of the head. Poor Rika, having to endure this every day… The look on Satoko's face at that moment could only be described as pure empathy for the blue-haired girl. At that moment, she felt happier than she had ever felt in the last few months. It had been too long since she had seen this Rena!

"So, what you're saying is… No… I shouldn't regret?" Mion said, still a bit confused.

"Onee," Shion addressed, smiling down at her sister. "It's that what is done is done and we need to move on from our regrets. And just sometimes, there is a brighter side to that regret than you may at first see. What did all our regrets lead to?"  
>Mion didn't even need to think. Rena and Keiichi both moved to Hinamizawa, Shion and her swapped places and took on a route they found much more comfortable and suiting, Satoko learned how to be strong and can stay strong as she waits for her brother, who she knows will appear, and Rika learned a valuable lesson that taught her how to appreciate her days. "…Our greatest happiness," she finished.<p>

Shion nodded. "That's it, Onee. So never go wishing that the tattoo thing hadn't happened, because I don't think I would survive a week in your position!" She laughed a bit, causing Mion to catch on and laugh with her. Yeah, she didn't fair too well in her world, and the other her was pretty much depressed from all the pressure the Sonozaki family put on her. How Shion endured it, Mion never knew, but she was not up to it.

She thought about the lesson a bit more and smiled. Their greatest regret led to their greatest happiness. Without their regrets, Keiichi and Rena would have never moved to Hinamizawa and made the greatest friends they ever could. Without her regret, Satoko would still be in misery, tugging on her brother's leg and eventually breaking. Without their regret, she and Shion would be suffering in their positions. Without her regret, Rika would have never learned how to truly appreciate the friends and life she had around her, and that was why she was the cheerful girl she was.

"I get it now. Is that what the dream was trying to tell me?" Mion asked.

Rika nodded her head. "It was. I guess your head thought you were thinking too much about something like that!" She knew very well that wasn't the truth, but still, it worked.

Mion thought more. Now that this was a regret, what did that mean? She shouldn't regret it? Yeah, she should just move on, because without it, she would have never learned this lesson. With this lesson, she could appreciate things and move on from her dark past and other memories, including the horrible ones from the other world. She could move on from the murderous Shion and her psychotic rage… that was all done and undone. It was in the past now. What mattered were the days ahead of her.

"So, now that that's learned…" Mion smiled. "What should I do now? Look forward to the future?"

"Yes!" cried Rika at once, startling Mion. "You should! I look forward to the many happy days we will spend together as a club, playing games with each other and making a mess."

Satoko practically hopped up and down. "I look forward to the day where Nii-Nii comes back and he can see how strong I've become!" she shouted excitedly.

Shion giggled at the sight of the eager little girl. "And I look forward to it, too. I can finally be together with him and spend countless days n happiness…" She seemed to drift off for a moment as a dreamy expression grew on her face and she found herself staring at the ceiling. There was a silly blush plastered all over her face that was so noticeable that Mion wondered why her sister wasn't embarrassed at all. After a few seconds, she seemed to snap out of her thoughts. "Oh yes, and Onee, you too."

Mion blinked with confusion. "Huh?" she said. "Me?"

Shion nodded. "You! When Kei-chan and you finally get together and get to be a real couple! Holding each other, kissing each other, loving each other…" There was a smirk plastered on her face as she watched her sister turn a bright tomato right. She just enjoyed the sight all too much. Mion found her hobby of doing so rather annoying, to say the least.

"S-S-S-Shion!" she stuttered out.

Shion laughed loudly. "Oh, Onee! Don't deny it! And you too, Kei-chan!" She turned towards Keiichi, who was also red as a beat and was desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Mion.

"I'm not doing anything!" he shouted, though it was futile to deny it. Shion elbowed him the stomach, causing him to cry out and choke. For a moment, his eyes locked with Mion's, and both of their faces got even redder, if that was even possible.

Rena giggled. "Count me in too, Shi-chan! I'm excited to see that too! I'm gonna be the one picking out Mi-chan's wedding dress for her, I call it now!"

The slightly older girl waggled her finger. "Tch tch, Rena, I had dibs on that since a long time ago! I do think you can help with making sure Keiichi is just as handsome as my beautiful sister and the cake fits just as well as- "

"WHY ARE WE DISCUSSING THIS?" Mion blurt out so loudly, unable to take the hot embarrassment filling her body at the very thought of their words. Even though she had been with Keiichi in the other world, it was still horribly embarrassing! This was a different him and the real Keiichi, after all!

Shion burst out into laughter. "Oh, you two, such lovesick teenagers…"

Rena and Rika joined in the laughter, while Mion and Keiichi sat their completely red-faced. Satoko, on the other hand, seemed puzzled, as if she didn't understand what was so funny and the topic of the conversation. She stood there until the chorus of laughter chimed down, when she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I don't know what's so funny, but I think that the sight of Keiichi-san in a tutu is funnier!" she yelled out as she pointed her nose up towards the ceiling in an arrogant expression. "So I think we should play a game now! It's been too long since you've been knocked out and I was suffering from the lack of humiliating Keiichi-san!"

"Yeah!" shouted Shion in agreement, punching her fist up in the air. "I agree! I missed it, too!"

Rena just smiled a little, and Rika cheered out loudly as she threw both fists in the air, chatting loudly about how funny it would be to see Keiichi in a tutu.

"W-What? Mion just woke up and you're already trying to get me into some stupid outfit again?" yelped Keiichi, outraged and horribly embarrassed. Combined with the chatter about him and Mion from before and what was going on now, it seemed a bit too much for him to take. "She's too hurt to play tag or something!"

However, Keiichi's last chance of getting away without having to wear some sort of girly outfit that day disappeared as a large smirk grew across Mion's face, one that she had felt she wouldn't ever wear again just days ago. Oh, how good the feeling felt. "Well," Mion said, "we don't need to play tag. Cards works just as well. My mind is good enough to take him on…" She grinned cruely at Keiichi, who shrank into a corner, yelling about how it wasn't fair he was always getting picked on.

Laughter filled the room. Oh, what fun they would have! And how long had it been since they had played games like this?

"I brought the cards just in case!" shouted Satoko, holding up a deck of cards. "I'll deal! Club leader, your game call!"

Mion stroked her chin, thinking hard. "Hm… how about Old Geezer? Simple, but perfect for starting out again."

Every club member shouted in agreement expect for Keiichi, who was just looking stunned as she stared at the girls around him, knowing that this day would not end well for him no matter how hard he tried. He just let out a sigh as he realized that he would end up hurting his pride yet again, and only minutes after his best friend had gotten better…

Mion grinned as she held the cards dealt to her in her hand. As she played, she watched every club member, and saw how happy she was. On the inside, she could feel it too. Happiness filling her up like she was a balloon just waiting to burst. This was her happiness, and it would never cease to exist. Though there may have been hardships in her past, she would now never think back on them. They led her to this. They led her to this fun.

And she would never trade it, not even for the world itself.

_~~~~X~~~~_

**Crimso's Corner V.3**

**Nooo! There goes WAN! I can't believe it.. I didn't even think I would finish it, and I got very close! It's 1:30 AM in the morning and I gotta wake up at 8 to go to camp, and then it's off for me! I don't even get to see the reviews for this chapter, I don't think. It's been a rough ride, but I'm glad it's over and I had so much fun writing it. I'm very proud. I have to tell you, when I was in the middle of this, I told myself that BFB was way better than this and that this fanfiction would go nowehere and I would like to forget about it when I was done, but seeing how it turned out, I think I can say I cahgned my mind. I was surprised to see how many more people liked and and said it was my best work so far. Wow… I'm stunned.**

**And now it's over.**

**So as usual, I'm going to request you review the epilogue and WAN as a whole! This time, I do not have a set structure for you to follow. It would be too hard to ask about your favorite OCs when Rion is the only OC. I do want to hear some things, though. Overall, what did you think of it? The plot? The story it told? The theme, the messages, the ideas? The characters? Anything you can think of. How does it compare to my other stories? Please let me know! I will give you a giant cookie I will steal from the Dining Hall tomorrow. Er—If they have cookies, that is, which I think they usually do on the first day of camp. You do not have to follow what I wrote there! Just anything will make me happy. Leave me a review for me to check up when I'm back from camp, because I highly doubt I will see any before I leave.**

**And now, it is getting late. I must end this because I need to wake up early tomorrow and I'm going to be as tired as hell. Thank you all so much for reading and supporting me! I know it was rough for me and I had places where I wasn't so good and places where I was, but I'm glad to hear that so many of you enjoyed it. Thank you to my reviewers, and just to anyone who made it this far! Also, please, take a look at EOG when I get it up! Not sure if it will be August or not. Oh, and please read TB if you're a fan of The Hunger Games! You can find the basic summary for that on my profile. It's not your typical HG fanfiction, I think. The main character is a minor character who I have expanded upon and so are the other characters, and it is an alternate verison the third book. I will be writing TB in a notebook during camp and typing up my handwritten work after camp ends, so I'm not done with writing just yet. TB is up next, starting… tomorrow? Yeah! That's it.**

**Okay, seriously. Thank you all so much! I love you, and please be sure to look at my upcoming work and leave a review! **

**Until next time, **

**~Crimso**


End file.
